Rapid adaptation to foreign-accented speech and its transfer to an unfamiliar talker

Xie, Xin; Weatherholtz, Kodi; Bainton, Larisa; Rowe, Emily; Burchill, Zachary; Liu, Linda; Jaeger, T. Florian

doi:10.1121/1.5027410

Cited by 43 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 63 publications

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“…For instance, listeners rapidly get attuned to the speech of unfamiliar L2 speakers, often requiring just over a minute of experience (Clarke & Garrett, 2004). Xie et al (2018) recently extended these findings to show that listeners improve quickly (in a matter of minutes) in speed and accuracy of comprehension of unfamiliar L2 speakers, arguing that long-and short-term adaptations to L2 speech might be driven by similar mechanisms. Our finding of a rapid convergence in interlocutors' comprehensibility ratings, which generally occurred within 1-3 minutes of their experience in the initial task (see Figure 3), is suggestive of a parallel phenomenon for comprehensibility.…”

Section: Between-speaker Alignment In Comprehensibilitymentioning

confidence: 90%

Second language comprehensibility as a dynamic construct

Trofimovich¹,

Nagle

O’Brien

et al. 2020

JSLP

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Abstract This study examined longitudinal changes in second language (L2) interlocutors’ mutual comprehensibility ratings (perceived ease of understanding speech), targeting comprehensibility as a dynamic, time-varying, interaction-centered construct. In a repeated-measures, within-participants design, 20 pairs of L2 English university students from different language backgrounds engaged in three collaborative and interactive tasks over 17 minutes, rating their partner’s comprehensibility at 2–3 minute intervals using 100-millimeter scales (seven ratings per interlocutor). Mutual comprehensibility ratings followed a U-shaped function over time, with comprehensibility (initially perceived to be high) being affected by task complexity but then reaching high levels by the end of the interaction. The interlocutors’ ratings also became more similar to each other early on and remained aligned throughout the interaction. These findings demonstrate the dynamic nature of comprehensibility between L2 interlocutors and suggest the need for L2 comprehensibility research to account for the effects of interaction, task, and time on comprehensibility measurements.

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Section: Between-speaker Alignment In Comprehensibilitymentioning

confidence: 90%

Second language comprehensibility as a dynamic construct

Trofimovich¹,

Nagle

O’Brien

et al. 2020

JSLP

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…We note that having a sufficient sample to provide substantial evidence for H1/H0 using Bayesian methods, or to obtain 90% power for frequentist methods, would likely require a much larger sample than is standard in these types of studies. Given the time-consuming nature of these multiple session training studies, moving to online testing may be necessary to make this feasible (see Xie et al, 2018 for an example of an acoustic training study done over the web), or alternately multi-lab collaboration may be necessary. Note that this would also allow us to see whether the fact that Perrachione et al, (2011) found their interaction with untrained voices, whereas Sadakata & McQueen (2014) found it only for trained voices, is a true difference (due to the different paradigms) or due to power.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effects of high versus low talker variability and individual aptitude on phonetic training of Mandarin lexical tones

Dong

Clayards

Brown

et al. 2019

PeerJ

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High variability (HV) training has been found to be more effective than low variability (LV) training when learning various non-native phonetic contrasts. However, little research has considered whether this applies to the learning of tone contrasts. The only two relevant studies suggested that the effect of HV training depends on the perceptual aptitude of participants (Perrachione et al., 2011; Sadakata & McQueen, 2014). The present study extends these findings by examining the interaction between individual aptitude and input variability using natural, meaningful second language input (both previous studies used pseudowords). A total of 60 English speakers took part in an eight session phonetic training paradigm. They were assigned to high/low/high-blocked variability training groups and learned real Mandarin tones and words. Individual aptitude was measured following previous work. Learning was measured using one discrimination task, one identification task and two production tasks. All tasks assessed generalization. All groups improved in both the production and perception of tones which transferred to untrained voices and items, demonstrating the effectiveness of training despite the increased complexity compared with previous research. Although the LV group exhibited an advantage with the training stimuli, there was no evidence for a benefit of high-variability in any of the tests of generalisation. Moreover, although aptitude significantly predicted performance in discrimination, identification and training tasks, no interaction between individual aptitude and variability was revealed. Additional Bayes Factor analyses indicated substantial evidence for the null for the hypotheses of a benefit of high-variability in generalisation, however the evidence regarding the interaction was ambiguous. We discuss these results in light of previous findings.

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“…We find that subtitles facilitate native language accent adaptation with far less exposure than in used in previous work on second language accent learning (approximately 45 seconds of speech input, compared to 30 minutes in [ 40 ]). This suggests that a small amount of exposure material is sufficient to investigate maintenance (see also [ 38 , 50 ]). Next, we discuss considerations for future research on information maintenance.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Previous studies have demonstrated that despite this variability, web-based experiments on speech perception are feasible [ 45 – 47 ]. This includes studies on accent adaptation [ 48 – 50 ]. To reduce the between-speaker variability, we required participants to use either in-ear or over-ear headphones when taking the experiment.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Maintaining information about speech input during accent adaptation

2018

Self Cite

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Speech understanding can be thought of as inferring progressively more abstract representations from a rapidly unfolding signal. One common view of this process holds that lower-level information is discarded as soon as higher-level units have been inferred. However, there is evidence that subcategorical information about speech percepts is not immediately discarded, but is maintained past word boundaries and integrated with subsequent input. Previous evidence for such subcategorical information maintenance has come from paradigms that lack many of the demands typical to everyday language use. We ask whether information maintenance is also possible under more typical constraints, and in particular whether it can facilitate accent adaptation. In a web-based paradigm, participants listened to isolated foreign-accented words in one of three conditions: subtitles were displayed concurrently with the speech, after speech offset, or not displayed at all. The delays between speech offset and subtitle presentation were manipulated. In a subsequent test phase, participants then transcribed novel words in the same accent without the aid of subtitles. We find that subtitles facilitate accent adaptation, even when displayed with a 6 second delay. Listeners thus maintained subcategorical information for sufficiently long to allow it to benefit adaptation. We close by discussing what type of information listeners maintain—subcategorical phonetic information, or just uncertainty about speech categories.

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Rapid adaptation to foreign-accented speech and its transfer to an unfamiliar talker

Cited by 43 publications

References 63 publications

Second language comprehensibility as a dynamic construct

Second language comprehensibility as a dynamic construct

The effects of high versus low talker variability and individual aptitude on phonetic training of Mandarin lexical tones

Maintaining information about speech input during accent adaptation

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