Native English speakers show a trading relation and perceptual integration of a temporal cue (F1transition duration) and spectral cues (F3andF2onset and transitions) differentiating the liquids /r/‐/l/ [L. Polka and W. Strange, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Suppl. 173,S53 (1983)]. To investigate the effects of linguistic experience on these perceptual phenomena, native Japanese speakers learning English completed forced‐choice identification and oddity discrimination tasks, using two synthetic /rak/‐/lak/ series in which the temporal and spectral cues were varied orthogonally. Identification functions of Japanese who could consistently label the /r/‐/l/ series showed a trading relation (a predictable shift in the identification category boundary) and perceptual integration of temporal and spectral cues. Discrimination of pairs differing on both cues was significantly better than spectral‐cue‐alone pairs only when the combination of cue values facilitated phonemic differentiation. Preliminary results with less advanced Japanese English learners showed no advantage in discrimination performance of two‐cue pairs over one‐cue pairs, suggesting that the perceptual integration of cues is a function of language‐specific phonetic processing. [Work supported by NIMH.]