Comprehension of familiar and unfamiliar native accents under adverse listening conditions.

Abstract

This study aimed to determine the relative processing cost associated with comprehension of an unfamiliar native accent under adverse listening conditions. Two sentence verification experiments were run in which listeners heard sentences at various signal-to-noise ratios. In Experiment 1, these sentences were spoken in a familiar native or an unfamiliar native accent, or in two familiar native accents. In Experiment 2, they were spoken in a familiar or unfamiliar native accent or in a non-native accent. The results indicated that the differences between the native accents influenced the speed of language processing under adverse listening conditions and that this processing speed was modulated by the relative familiarity of the listener with the native accent.Furthermore, the results demonstrated that the processing cost associated with the nonnative accent was larger than for the unfamiliar native accent.

Predicting foreign-accent adaptation in older adults

“…Second, we wanted to be sure listeners were all equally unfamiliar with the accented speech (Adank et al, 2009;Floccia, Goslin, Girard, & Konopczynski, 2006). Note that the perception of vowels is not as affected by (age-related) high-frequency hearing loss as consonant perception would be (but cf.…”

“…Nevertheless, comprehension is often more effortful and less efficient than under less adverse conditions. For instance, when listeners are performing a semantic verification task (i.e., reporting whether a sentence such as "dogs have four ears" is true or false) spoken in a regional accent they are not familiar with, they show slower response times and higher error scores than when they listen to a known accent or the standard variant of their language (Adank, Evans, Stuart-Smith, & Scott, 2009).…”

Comprehension of a novel accent by young and older listeners.

“…Accented speech represents variation that (older) listeners encounter every day and that is processed slower and less efficiently than is native speech (Adank, Evans, Stuart-Smith, & Scott, 2009;Floccia, Goslin, Girard, & Konopczynski, 2006;Munro & Derwing, 1995;Rogers, Dalby, & Nishi, 2004), but also represents a distortion that listeners can quickly adapt to (Clarke & Garrett, 2004).…”

Cross-Accent Intelligibility of Speech in Noise: Long-Term Familiarity and Short-Term Familiarization

“…Nathan, Wells & Donlan, 1998;Nathan & Wells, 2001;Fraser Gupta 2005;Floccia, Goslin, Girard, & Konopczynski, 2006;Floccia, Butler, Goslin, & Ellis, 2009;Adank, Evans, Stuart-Smith, & Scott, 2009;Sumner & Samuel, 2009). The typical pattern is that speech in one's own accent is easier to understand than speech in a different regional accent, which in turn is easier to understand than non-native accented speech (Adank et al, 2009;Floccia et al, 2006; but see also Floccia et al, 2009). The processing costs associated with listening to other accents may arise because the acoustic-phonetic input from another accent produces either weak activation of intended words, and/or inappropriate activation of competitor words (Clopper, Pierrehumbert & Tamati, 2010;Dahan, Drucker & Scarborough, 2008).…”

“…It is well known that listeners perform less well when listening to speech in an accent other than their own, as shown by experiments using a range of paradigms, regional accents, participant age groups and speech styles (e.g. Nathan, Wells & Donlan, 1998;Nathan & Wells, 2001;Fraser Gupta 2005;Floccia, Goslin, Girard, & Konopczynski, 2006;Floccia, Butler, Goslin, & Ellis, 2009;Adank, Evans, Stuart-Smith, & Scott, 2009;Sumner & Samuel, 2009). The typical pattern is that speech in one's own accent is easier to understand than speech in a different regional accent, which in turn is easier to understand than non-native accented speech (Adank et al, 2009;Floccia et al, 2006; but see also Floccia et al, 2009).…”