How do speakers accommodate distracted listeners? Specifically, how does prosody change when speakers know that their addressees are multitasking? Speakers might use more acoustically prominent words for distracted addressees, to ensure that important information is communicated. Alternatively, speakers might disengage from the task and use less prominent pronunciations with distracted addressees. A further question is whether prosodic prominence changes globally or if there are effects specific to the most relevant information. We studied these effects in two instruction-giving experiments. Speakers instructed listeners to move objects to locations on a board. In the distraction condition, addressees were also completing a demanding secondary computer task; in the attentive condition they paid full attention. Results demonstrated that speakers modify their speech for distracted listeners, and in an instruction-giving task they specifically use more acoustically prominent (longer) pronunciations for distracted listeners. This effect was localised to the most task-relevant information: the object to be moved.
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