The Perception of Fluency in Native and Nonnative Speech

Bosker, Hans R.; Quené, Hugo; Sanders, Ted; Jong, Nivja H. de

doi:10.1111/lang.12067

Cited by 93 publications

(55 citation statements)

References 62 publications

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“…This applies to raters who are experienced in teaching and testing L2 speakers (Kormos and Dénes, 2004) as well as to untrained native or nonnative speakers (Bosker et al, 2013;Pinget et al, 2014;Rossiter, 2009). These findings are corroborated by two more experimental studies in which speech samples are phonetically manipulated (Munro & Derwing, 1998;Bosker, Quené, Sanders & De Jong, 2014). Munro and Derwing (1998, Exp. 2) reduced the speech rate of the recordings of Mandarin speakers of English as a second language and native speakers of English and found that native listeners were negatively affected by the manipulation of speech rate.…”

Section: Two Factors: Features Of the Speech And Rater Backgroundsupporting

confidence: 66%

“…Munro and Derwing (1998, Exp. 2) reduced the speech rate of the recordings of Mandarin speakers of English as a second language and native speakers of English and found that native listeners were negatively affected by the manipulation of speech rate. Bosker et al (2014) conducted an experiment in which the number and length of pauses in native and non-native speech was manipulated. Natives were rated more fluent and speech with no pauses was also rated as more fluent than speech with short and long pauses, respectively.…”

Section: Two Factors: Features Of the Speech And Rater Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Professional and non-professional raters’ responsiveness to fluency and accuracy in L2 speech: An experimental approach

2017

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It is general practice to use rater judgments in speaking proficiency testing. However, it has been shown that raters' knowledge and experience may influence their ratings, both in terms of leniency and varied focus on different aspects of speech.The purpose of this study is to identify raters' relative responsiveness to fluency and linguistic accuracy in an occupational context, and to investigate whether professional and non-professional raters with a broad exposure to L2 speech demonstrate similar responsiveness to these two aspects. To this end, an experimental approach was applied. Fluency and accuracy were separated and systematically manipulated. As it is known that foreign accentedness of speech influences raters' judgments, this factor was accounted for. Seventeen responses to a Dutch L2 exam in a vocational context were converted into four different versions manipulated for morphosyntactical accuracy and/or fluency, and read by a Dutch L2 actor, resulting in 68 stimuli. Fifty-five professional raters and 41 non-trained, potential stakeholders holistically rated all stimuli. All raters had extensive prior exposure to spoken L2 Dutch.Linear mixed modeling showed that improvement of either fluency or accuracy led to significantly higher ratings by both linguistically trained and non-trained raters. This finding confirms that both groups perceive these aspects to be important features of speaking proficiency. Raters seemed research-article2017Article 502 Language Testing 35(4)to be more responsive to improvement of accuracy than of fluency. The linguistically non-trained raters seemed to appreciate the fluency improvement more than linguistically trained raters. The linguistically trained raters rewarded morpho-syntactical improvement relatively higher than the non-trained raters. This latter effect was explained by the finding that the linguistically trained raters seemed to be more preoccupied with accuracy, according to their responses to a questionnaire. This result suggests that raters with linguistic expertise were more attentive to accuracy whereas non-trained raters were relatively more attentive to fluency.

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Section: Two Factors: Features Of the Speech And Rater Backgroundsupporting

confidence: 66%

Section: Two Factors: Features Of the Speech And Rater Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Professional and non-professional raters’ responsiveness to fluency and accuracy in L2 speech: An experimental approach

2017

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“…While exemplar models and probabilistic models of perception can deal with the effect via direct associations between fast speech and the presence of fast-speech processes, abstractionist models would assume increased cognitive load due to more difficult mapping between signal and representations. Together with other recent studies on external influences on the implicit perception of speaking rate (Bosker & Reinisch, 2015;Bosker et al, 2016), evidence appears to accumulate that normalization for speaking rate may in fact be explained at multiple levels of processing.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Bosker and Reinisch (2015) showed that carrier sentences that were spoken by a nonnative speaker led to more Blong vowelr esponses than when the carrier was spoken by a native speaker. That is, despite an overall match in long-term spectral properties, duration, and number of realized segments, nonnative speech was perceived as faster than native speech in an implicit rate normalization task.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Natural fast speech is perceived as faster than linearly time-compressed speech

Reinisch

2016

Atten Percept Psychophys

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Listeners compensate for variation in speaking rate: In a fast context, a given sound is interpreted as longer than in a slow context. Experimental rate manipulations have been achieved either through linear compression or by using natural fast speech. However, in natural fast speech, segments are subject to processes such as reduction or deletion. If speaking rate is then defined as the number of segments per unit time, the question arises as to what impact such processes have on listeners' normalization for speaking rate. The present study tested the effect of sentence duration and fast-speech processes on rate normalization for a German vowel duration contrast. Results showed that a naturally produced short sentence containing segmental reductions and deletions led to the most BlongB vowel responses whereas the long sentence with clearly articulated segments led to the fewest. This suggests that speaking rate is not merely calculated as the number of segments realized per unit time. Rather, listeners associate properties of natural fast speech with a higher speaking rate. This contrasts with earlier results and a second experiment in which perceived speaking rate was measured in an explicit task. Models of speech comprehension are evaluated with regard to the present findings.

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“…It has long been recognized that prosodic properties of the acoustic context do not merely serve as background noise, but rather influence subsequent speech perception [1,2]. For instance, the perception of an ambiguous Dutch vowel midway between short /ɑ/ and long /a:/ may be shifted towards the perception of long /a:/ by presenting it in a context sentence with a fast speech rate [3].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Our own speech rate influences speech perception

Bosker

2016

Speech Prosody 2016

Self Cite

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During conversation, spoken utterances occur in rich acoustic contexts, including speech produced by our interlocutor(s) and speech we produced ourselves. Prosodic characteristics of the acoustic context have been known to influence speech perception in a contrastive fashion: for instance, a vowel presented in a fast context is perceived to have a longer duration than the same vowel in a slow context. Given the ubiquity of the sound of our own voice, it may be that our own speech rate -a common source of acoustic context -also influences our perception of the speech of others. Two experiments were designed to test this hypothesis. Experiment 1 replicated earlier contextual rate effects by showing that hearing pre-recorded fast or slow context sentences alters the perception of ambiguous Dutch target words. Experiment 2 then extended this finding by showing that talking at a fast or slow rate prior to the presentation of the target words also altered the perception of those words. These results suggest that between-talker variation in speech rate production may induce between-talker variation in speech perception, thus potentially explaining why interlocutors tend to converge on speech rate in dialogue settings.

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The Perception of Fluency in Native and Nonnative Speech

Cited by 93 publications

References 62 publications

Professional and non-professional raters’ responsiveness to fluency and accuracy in L2 speech: An experimental approach

Professional and non-professional raters’ responsiveness to fluency and accuracy in L2 speech: An experimental approach

Natural fast speech is perceived as faster than linearly time-compressed speech

Our own speech rate influences speech perception

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