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

Abstract

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.

Shhh… I Need Quiet! Children’s Understanding of American, British, and Japanese-accented English Speakers

“…Therefore, even in cases in which an unfamiliar dialect does not appear to have an impact on children's speech recognition or understanding in quiet conditions, there might be an impact of a mismatch in dialect between the speaker and listener under real-world listening conditions. These findings also bear on the claim that children show relatively mature abilities for understanding speakers with unfamiliar nonnative accents and dialects by 2 to 2.5 years in novel word learning tasks (Schmale et al, 2011) and word recognition tasks in which looks to a target object versus a distractor were measured (van Heugten & Johnson, 2016;van Heugten et al, 2015). Adult-like performance may not emerge until much later in development if perception is considered outside of ideal, laboratory conditions.…”

“…However, later in the first year of life and into the second year, children’s ability to recognize known words with these variations improves (Best, Tyler, Gooding, Orlando, & Quann, 2009; Houston & Jusczyk, 2000; Mulak, Best, Tyler, Kitamura, & Irwin, 2013; Schmale et al, 2010; Schmale & Seidl, 2009; Singh et al, 2004; van Heugten, Krieger, & Johnson, 2015). The essential skills needed to recognize words produced in unfamiliar regional dialects and foreign accents may be in place by 2.5 years of age (Schmale, Hollich, & Seidl, 2011; van Heugten & Johnson, 2016) and can be evidenced even earlier if children are provided with a short period of exposure (van Heugten & Johnson, 2014; White & Aslin, 2011). Although foundational skills may emerge within the first few years of life, research with older children suggests that children continue to have an immature ability to contend with dialect and accent variation well into the school-age years (Bent, 2014; Bent & Atagi, 2015, 2017; Nathan, Wells, & Donlan, 1998; Newton & Ridgway, 2016; O’Connor & Gibbon, 2011).…”

Accent detection and social cognition: evidence of protracted learning

“…On the other hand, it may simply reflect that, of the four salient response options on each trial (square, circle, star, triangle), the pictures’ names were sufficiently phonologically distinct that the presence of a foreign accent did not impede comprehension . This is perhaps not surprising given findings of good accented speech comprehension in even younger children (Van Heugten & Johnson, , in 28‐month‐olds; Mulak, Best, Tyler, Kitamura, & Irwin, , in 19‐month‐olds).…”

Preschool children's categorization of speakers by regional accent

“…Previous research provides conflicting results regarding the role of infants’ previous exposure to accent varieties once they have reached the stage of phonological constancy. Prior exposure to an unfamiliar accent under laboratory conditions was found by Schmale, Cristia, and Seidl (2012) to help 24-month-old infants’ understanding and processing of the accent, but this was contradicted by van Heugten and Johnson's (2015) study of 28-month-old infants.…”