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Substantial individual differences exist in regard to type and amount of experience with variable speech resulting from foreign or regional accents. Whereas prior experience helps with processing familiar accents, research on how experience with accented speech affects processing of unfamiliar accents is inconclusive, ranging from perceptual benefits to processing disadvantages. We examined how experience with accented speech modulates mono- and bilingual children's (mean age: 9;10) ease of speech comprehension for two unfamiliar accents in German, one foreign and one regional. More experience with regional accents helped children repeat sentences correctly in the regional condition and in the standard condition. More experience with foreign accents did not help in either accent condition. The results suggest that type and amount of accent experience co-determine processing ease of accented speech.

According to usage-based models of phonology, the more frequently a word is used and perceived in accented pronunciation variants, the more exemplars of accented tokens are stored and then used for subsequent productions of this word. This may lead to greater production variability in speakers with more variable input than in speakers with less variable input (cf. Pierrehumbert, 2001). This contrasts with abstractionist theories and with proposals according to which children unconsciously filter out accent features. This study assesses the effects of variable input and lexical frequency on speech production by children (mean age 9;10) growing up with one or more languages and with exposure to regional varieties and foreign accents. In a picture-naming task, 60 children were tested on their production of eight German vowels. Children who experience more input variability produced more variable vowels in terms of greater Euclidean distances. Vowels in frequent words were produced with more variability than in infrequent words. Vowel position (F1) differed depending on language background (monolingual versus bilingual) and amount of input in regional varieties. The results imply that greater input variation can account for variable vowel production, in line with usage-based theories.

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We use a novel paradigm to examine the effect of language exposure and variable input on the acquisition of words in primary school-aged children. Children growing up with different languages and foreign or regional accents in their input might benefit from their experience with variability when learning new words from peers with unfamiliar accents. We ask to what extent language and accent experience helps monolingual and bilingual children learn new words in the context of accent variability. Children (aged 7-11 years) played a computerized card game with virtual peers that resembles natural advanced lexical acquisition, during which new words are learned from child speakers and are produced actively in peer-group interactions. Successful word learning was predicted by the amount of input in regional and foreign accents but not by exposure to other languages (i.e., bilingualism). We discuss how accent experience affects word learning under variable input conditions.