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

Abstract

Listeners must cope with a great deal of variability in the speech signal, and thus theories of speech perception must also account for variability, which comes from a number of sources, including variation between accents. It is well-known that there is a processing cost when listening to speech in an accent other than one's own, but recent work has suggested that this cost is reduced when listening to a familiar accent widely represented in the media, and/or when short amounts of exposure to an accent are provided. Little is known, however, about how these factors (long-term familiarity and short-term familiarization with an accent) interact. The current study tested this interaction by playing listeners difficult-to-segment sentences in noise, before and after a familiarization period where the same sentences were heard in the clear, allowing us to manipulate shortterm familiarization. Listeners were speakers of either Glasgow English or Standard Southern British English, and they listened to speech in either their own or the other accent, thereby allowing us to manipulate long-term familiarity. Results suggest that both long-term familiarity and short-term familiarization mitigate the perceptual processing costs of listening to an accent that is not one's own, but seem not to compensate for them entirely, even when the accent is widely heard in the media.3

Accent Intelligibility Differences in Noise Across Native and Nonnative Accents: Effects of Talker–Listener Pairing at Acoustic–Phonetic and Lexical Levels

“…The intelligibility of an accent depends heavily on the particular combination of talker and listener. Listeners with a standard native accent generally find their own accent more intelligible than a regional accent (e.g., Adank, Evans, Stuart-Smith & Scott, 2009;Clopper & Bradlow, 2008;Pinet, Iverson & Huckvale, 2011;Smith, Holmes-Elliott, Pettinato & Knight, 2014) or a non-native accent (e.g., Adank et al, 2009;Bent & Bradlow, 2003;Floccia, Butler, Goslin & Ellis, 2009;Pinet et al, 2011). However, a regional accent is usually as intelligible as a standard native accent for regional-accented listeners (e.g., Adank et al, 2009;Floccia, Goslin, Girard & Konopczynski, 2006;Sumner & Samuel, 2009), and lower-proficiency non-native listeners can find a non-native accent to be more intelligible than a native accent (Pinet & Iverson, 2010;Pinet et al, 2011).…”

Glasgow Gloom or Leeds Glue? Dialect-Specific Vowel Duration Constrains Lexical Segmentation and Access

“…Familiarity with standard accents, e.g. via media exposure, has often been argued to Phonetica 2017;74:1-24 DOI: 10.1159/000444857 Dialect-Specific Vowel Duration and Lexical Access underlie asymmetries in cross-dialect speech perception (Floccia et al, 2006;Adank et al, 2009;Smith et al, 2014). Possibly, familiarity with Standard Southern British English or even General American durational patterning might have helped GE listeners to process LE-appropriate long vowels, whereas LE listeners are unlikely to have been exposed to SVLR-like durational patterning.…”

Children's comprehension of an unfamiliar speaker accent: a review

“…, Clarke and Garrett , Smith et al . ). As previously discussed, findings from studies with younger participants (aged 25 months and below) have produced conflicting results in terms of short‐term exposure to unfamiliar accents.…”

“…A period of adaptation is also reflective of the clinical setting, where clinicians spend time talking to the client establishing rapport before introducing the assessment procedure. Research from the adult literature also found that a short pre-exposure phase may reduce the processing costs associated with the comprehension of unfamiliar accents (Baese-Berk et al 2013, Clarke and Garrett 2004, Smith et al 2014. As previously discussed, findings from studies with younger participants (aged 25 months and below) have produced conflicting results in terms of short-term exposure to unfamiliar accents.…”

“…Evidence from sociolinguistic studies suggests that media can play a role in altering the production of accents (Stuart-Smith et al 2013). However, Smith et al (2014) showed that both long and short-term exposure to regional accents through the media did not fully eradicate the processing costs of listening to an accent that is not one's own. Therefore, it is likely that even children with long-term familiarization to another accent through media exposure will still experience some processing difficulties with that accent.…”