The Developmental Trajectory of Toddlers’ Comprehension of Unfamiliar Regional Accents

Heugten, Marieke van; Krieger, Dena; Johnson, Elizabeth

doi:10.1080/15475441.2013.879636

Cited by 49 publications

(67 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…In comparison to most other speaker-related information affecting the acousticphonetic variability in the speech signal (e.g., gender, age, mood), unfamiliar accents can be notoriously challenging to cope with because, depending on the population, children may have far less experience with this type of variation early on in life. Perhaps, as a result, children continue to experience difficulty with unfamiliar accents long after they have learned to recognize words produced by unfamiliar speakers of their own regional background (Best et al, 2009;Floccia et al, 2012;Mulak et al, 2013;van Heugten & Johnson, 2014;van Heugten et al, 2015). In other words, accented speech remains appropriately susceptible to task demands in toddlerhood.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These words are generally well known by 28-month-olds, as indicated by an average target word production rate of 89.9% (range 69%-98.3%) at this age in the Lexical Development Norms for English (Dale & Fenson, 1996). Moreover, past work using these same test items has shown that even 25-month-olds have no difficulty understanding them (van Heugten et al, 2015). Each noun was represented by an image and the images were matched for approximate size and interest.…”

Section: Stimulimentioning

confidence: 99%

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Toddlers’ Word Recognition in an Unfamiliar Regional Accent: The Role of Local Sentence Context and Prior Accent Exposure

Heugten

Johnson

2016

Lang Speech

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Adults are generally adept at recognizing familiar words in unfamiliar accents. However, studies testing young children's abilities to cope with accent-related variation in the speech signal have generated mixed results, with some work emphasizing toddlers' early competence and other work focusing more on their long-lasting difficulties in this domain. Here, we set out to unify these two perspectives and propose that task demands may play a crucial role in children's recognition of accented words. To this end, Canadian-English-learning 28-month-olds' looks to images on a screen were recorded while they were presented with a Scottish-accented speaker instructing them to find a depicted target object. To examine the effect of task demands, both local sentence context and prior accent exposure were manipulated. Overall, Canadian toddlers were found to recognize Scottish-accented words successfully, showing above-chance performance in the identification of words produced in an unfamiliar accent, even when target labels were presented in isolation. However, word recognition was considerably more robust when target words were presented in sentence context. Prior exposure to the unfamiliar Scottish accent in the laboratory did not modulate children's performance in this task. Taken together, these findings suggest that at least some task-related factors can affect children's recognition of accented words. Understanding unfamiliar accents, like understanding familiar accents, is thus not an isolated skill but, rather, is susceptible to contextual circumstances. Future models of spoken language processing in toddlerhood should incorporate these early effects of task demands.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Stimulimentioning

confidence: 99%

Toddlers’ Word Recognition in an Unfamiliar Regional Accent: The Role of Local Sentence Context and Prior Accent Exposure

Heugten

Johnson

2016

Lang Speech

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“…Adult listeners process speech produced with an unknown accent more slowly than familiar-accented speech (e.g., Adank, Evans, Stuart-Smith, & Scotti, 2009; Cristià et al, 2012; Schmid & Yeni-Komshian, 1999), and less proficient language users have even more difficulty comprehending unfamiliar accents (e.g., Nathan & Wells, 2001; Nathan, Wells, & Donlan, 1998; Newton & Ridgway, 2016; Schmale, Hollich, & Seidl, 2011; Van Heugten, Krieger, & Johnson, 2015). Infants are particularly hindered by novel accents (e.g., Best, Tyler, Gooding, Orlando & Quann, 2009; Mulak, Best, Tyler, Kitamura, & Irwin, 2013; Van Heugten & Johnson, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…With experience, infants learn to overcome the differences between a new accent and their native accent (e.g., Mulak et al, 2013; Schmale et al, 2011; Van Heugten & Johnson, 2014; Van Heugten et al, 2015). For example, 15-month-olds recognize familiar words produced in an unfamiliar accent given appropriate support (Van Heugten & Johnson, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exposure to multiple accents supports infants’ understanding of novel accents

Potter

Saffran

2017

Cognition

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Accented speech poses a challenge for listeners, particularly those with limited knowledge of their language. In a series of studies, we explored the possibility that experience with variability, specifically the variability provided by multiple accents, would facilitate infants' comprehension of speech produced with an unfamiliar accent. 15- and 18-month-old American-English learning infants were exposed to brief passages of multi-talker speech and subsequently tested on their ability to distinguish between real, familiar words and nonsense words, produced in either their native accent or an unfamiliar (British) accent. Exposure passages were produced in a familiar (American) accent, a single unfamiliar (British) accent or a variety of novel accents (Australian, Southern, Indian). While 15-month-olds successfully recognized real words spoken in a familiar accent, they never demonstrated comprehension of English words produced in the unfamiliar accent. 18-month-olds also failed to recognize English words spoken in the unfamiliar accent after exposure to the familiar or single unfamiliar accent. However, they succeeded after exposure to multiple unfamiliar accents, suggesting that as they get older, infants are better able to exploit the cues provided by variable speech. Increased variability across multiple dimensions can be advantageous for young listeners.

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“…(25 months for Canadian toddlers hearing Australian-accented English; van Heugten, Krieger, & Johnson, 2015; 19 months for Australian toddlers hearing Jamaican-accented English: Mulak et al, 2013), and newly-learned words if they have brief exposure to the accent (Schmale, Cristia, & Seidl, 2012). By 2.5 years, children no longer need accent exposure for recognizing familiar words (Van Heugten & Johnson, in press) or newly-learned words (Schmale, Hollich, & Seidl, 2011).…”

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confidence: 99%