The influence of gradient foreign accentedness and listener experience on word recognition

Gradient and categorical patterns of spoken-word recognition and processing of phonetic details

“…Finally, GAMMs can handle unbalanced data (i.e., missing data points), which is common in eye tracking as participants are free to fixate outside of the predetermined interest areas during a trial. GAMMs have successfully been used in past research to analyze visual world eye movements (Porretta, Kyrölaïnen, van Rij, & Järvikivi, 2017;Porretta, Tucker, & Järvikivi, 2016; van Rij, Hollebrandse, & Hendriks, 2016). Also note that GAMMs require visual inspection of model estimates to interpret (non-)significance of factors, especially since Bnonlinear trends are difficult to capture with a single parameter ( Porretta et al, 2017, p. 270).…”

Eyes Wide Open: Pupillary Response to a Foreign Accent Varying in Intelligibility

“…In both cross-modal identity priming and visual world paradigm eye-tracking to native-and Chinese-accented English, Porretta et al (2016) showed a significant interaction between gradient foreign accentedness and listener experience interacting with Chinese-accented speakers. With regard to reaction times in the cross-modal identity priming task, stronger accentedness of the auditory prime led to longer reaction times to the written form of the word, indicating that greater accentedness reduced the effectiveness of the prime.…”

“…Significant research has been conducted in the area of accented speech processing (see Cristia et al, 2012, for a general overview). That body of research has repeatedly demonstrated that the presence of a foreign accent generally leads to a disruption in processing, which has been observed in both offline processing (i.e., transcription accuracy, see, for example, Bradlow and Bent, 2008) and online processing, including reaction time and eye-tracking (see, for example, Floccia et al, 2009;Porretta et al, 2016), and EEG (see, for example, Hanulíková et al, 2012;Porretta et al, 2017). Importantly, the observed processing costs associated with nonnative speech appear to depend on the strength of the accent (see Porretta et al, 2016 for an example using accentedness ratings; Witteman et al, 2013, for an example using vowel substitutions).…”

“…Further, Bradlow and Bent (2008) showed that transcription accuracy to a new talker improved if participants had previously been exposed to multiple other talkers of the same accent, suggesting a more generalized adaptation to the accent more broadly, rather than to the specific talker (see Kleinschmidt and Jaeger, 2015, for discussion on generalized adaptation). These studies suggest the importance of listener experience with the accent in question, which has been further investigated using online measures (see Witteman et al, 2013;Porretta et al, 2016).…”

“…To the best of our knowledge, pupillometry has not yet been applied to the study of foreignaccented speech processing. Applying pupil dilation to accented speech allows us to gain insight into the magnitude and duration of the cognitive load incurred during processing which, in behavioral studies (e.g., Floccia et al, 2009;Porretta et al, 2016), has been shown to manifest as pervasive processing cost. In particular, the present study applies pupillometry to address questions regarding the extent to which a foreign accent impacts the amount of effort listeners must exert in order to understand non-native speech, and if (and how) challenges related to understanding this naturally occurring form of variability can be overcome through daily life experience.…”