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The perception of intonational contours of a foreign language can pose problems for some non-native learners. An error rarely mentioned in the literature is the confusion of the English nuclear accent H*L-H% (falling-rising contour) with the H*L-L% nuclear accent (falling contour). To investigate the factors that contribute to this error, this study looked into the psycho-acoustic categorisation and pragmatic interpretation of these nuclear pitch accents in two groups of River Plate Spanish speakers; one with previous explicit instruction and the other one without such instruction. Both performed two types of listening tasks. The first task consisted of determining the pragmatic meaning associated with a series of minimal intonational pairs. In the second task, participants had to decide whether the intonational contour was falling or falling-rising. Results showed that, for both groups, the pragmatic meaning-oriented task promoted a better categorization of H*L-L% as an assertion, but hindered the categorization of H*L-H% as a question. In the psychoacoustic task, the group exposed to explicit instruction achieved better categorization of the H*L-H% form as a falling-rising contour, while the group without instruction was less successful. In light of the L2LP model (Escudero, 2005), it is concluded that an L2 intonational form not existent in the L1 is more difficult to learn than an L2 form similar to one existent in the L1; on the other hand, the novel form is more easily processed in the psycho-acoustic listening modality. Additionally, explicit instruction facilitates both psycho-acoustic categorisation and pragmatic interpretation of the nuclear accent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]