Accent Intelligibility Differences in Noise Across Native and Nonnative Accents: Effects of Talker–Listener Pairing at Acoustic–Phonetic and Lexical Levels

Stringer, Louise; Iverson, Paul

doi:10.1044/2019_jslhr-s-17-0414

Cited by 12 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 56 publications

(92 reference statements)

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“…If child speech is processed in a similar manner, this could explain why experience-dependent general adaptation to child speech was absent from the present study. That said, we readily admit that the ecological validity of our conclusions could be strengthened by further exploring this issue using target words produced in speech phrases without noise (e.g., see Stringer & Iverson, 2019). It could also be illuminating to examine the potential impact of visual context on our results.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 81%

Who speaks “kid?” How experience with children does (and does not) shape the intelligibility of child speech.

Yu¹,

Cooper²,

Johnson³

2023

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

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Child speech deviates from adult speech in predictable ways. Are listeners who routinely interact with children implicitly aware of these systematic deviations, and thereby better at understanding children? Or do idiosyncratic differences in how children pronounce words overwhelm these systematic deviations? In Experiment 1, we use a speech-in-noise transcription task to test who "speaks kid" among four listener groups: undergraduates (n = 48), mothers of young children (n = 48), early childhood educators (n = 48), and speech-language pathologists (SLPs; n = 48). All listeners transcribed speech by typically developing children and adults. In Experiment 2, we use a similar task to test an additional group of mothers (n = 50) on how intelligible they found their own child versus another child. Contrary to previous claims, we find no evidence for an experience-based general child speech intelligibility advantage. However, we do find that mothers understand their own child best. We also observe a general task advantage by SLPs. Our findings demonstrate that routine (and even extensive) exposure to children may not make all children more intelligible, but that it may instead make particular children one has experience with more intelligible. Public Significance StatementThe goal of the study is to determine who (if anyone) "speaks kid." In support of existing evidence, we find that experience with a child makes it easier to understand words produced by that child specifically; however, this frequent experience does not predict a general child speech processing advantage. We did, however, find that speech-language pathologists had a general advantage in understanding words spoken by both adults and children. Our findings clarify existing claims in the literature and provide key insights into the nature of human speech processing in general.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 81%

Who speaks “kid?” How experience with children does (and does not) shape the intelligibility of child speech.

Yu¹,

Cooper²,

Johnson³

2023

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

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“…Thus, various studies examined whether L2 listeners experience a benefit when listening to nonnative rather than native speech, either in their own accent or a different L2 accent (Bent & Bradlow, 2003), but evidence regarding this phenomenon is mixed (cf. Stibbard & Lee, 2006), and research suggests that its manifestation depends (at least partly) on listening proficiency and the acoustic phonetic similarity of the talker’s and listener’s accents (e.g., Pinet et al, 2011; Stringer & Iverson, 2019).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Co-text, context, and listening proficiency as crucial variables in intelligibility among nonnative users of English

Thir

2023

Stud Second Lang Acquis

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Research on intelligibility in international encounters has long focused on issues of pronunciation to the detriment of factors such as linguistic co-text and extralinguistic context, which are comparatively well-studied variables in intelligibility research concerning L1 listeners. This paper seeks to expand the scope of international intelligibility research in this respect by reporting on a large-scale study involving 423 nonnative listeners at different proficiency levels, who transcribed words spoken with another nonnative accent under four conditions that varied in the availability of syntactic, semantic, and schematic cues. The results suggest that co-text and context as well as listening proficiency are crucial variables that ought to receive greater attention in research on international intelligibility. The pedagogical implications of these findings are addressed as well.

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“…In the task, 20 adults were asked to transcribe the passages produced by the eight non-local speakers (i.e., the two British, two Australian, two Dutch, and two French-accented speakers). Because adults are much more proficient than young children in adapting to unfamiliar accents (Cristia et al, 2012), we embedded our speech samples in noise to avoid potential ceiling effects (Clopper & Bradlow, 2008; Stringer & Iverson, 2019). Comprehension was assessed by computing the mean percentage of words that participants correctly transcribed from the passages in each of the four accents.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How sociolinguistic factors shape children’s subjective impressions of teacher quality

Paquette‐Smith

Buckler

Johnson

2022

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

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When university students are asked to rate their instructors, their evaluations are often influenced by the demographic characteristics of the instructor – such as the instructor’s race, gender or language background. These influences can manifest in unfair systematic biases against particular groups of teachers, and hamper movements to promote diversity in higher education. When and how do these biases develop? Here, we begin to address these questions by examining children’s sociolinguistic biases against teachers who speak with different accents. To do this, we presented five-year-old Canadian English-speaking children with pairs of adult talkers. Children were asked to select ‘who they’d like to be their teacher’ then they rated ‘how good of a teacher’ they thought each talker would be on a 5-point scale. In each trial, one talker spoke in the locally dominant variety of Canadian English, and the other spoke in a different accent. Children strongly preferred Canadian-accented teachers over teachers who spoke with non-native (i.e., French or Dutch) accents, but also demonstrated a preference for Canadian teachers over teachers who spoke with non-local regional accents (i.e., Australian or British). In line with the binary choice data, children rated the Canadian talkers more favorably. The relationship between the gender of the teacher and the gender of the child also impacted ratings. This work demonstrates that even at the onset of formal education, children may already exhibit signs of accent-based biases. We discuss these findings in relation to the growing literature on implicit bias in higher education.

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Accent Intelligibility Differences in Noise Across Native and Nonnative Accents: Effects of Talker–Listener Pairing at Acoustic–Phonetic and Lexical Levels

Cited by 12 publications

References 56 publications

Who speaks “kid?” How experience with children does (and does not) shape the intelligibility of child speech.

Who speaks “kid?” How experience with children does (and does not) shape the intelligibility of child speech.

Co-text, context, and listening proficiency as crucial variables in intelligibility among nonnative users of English

How sociolinguistic factors shape children’s subjective impressions of teacher quality

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