Exploring Effects of Brief Daily Exposure to Unfamiliar Accent on Listening Performance and Cognitive Load

Abstract

Listeners rapidly “tune” to unfamiliar accented speech, and some evidence also suggests that they may improve over multiple days of exposure. The present study aimed to measure accommodation of unfamiliar second language- (L2-) accented speech over a consecutive five day period using both a measure of listening effort (a dual-task paradigm) and a measure of listening performance (intelligibility). All subjects completed a dual-task paradigm with L1 and L2 accent on Days 1 and 5, and were exposed to either L1 (control group) or unfamiliar L2 (training groups) accent on Days 2-4. One training group was given a purely exposure-based training, and another was given implicit feedback. Results indicated a performance benefit for L2 accent perception from the exposure-based training but not the exposure-with-feedback training. All groups, including the control group, showed reduced listening effort on Day 5 of the study, reflecting adaptation to the task, but the training groups did not show greater reductions for the L2 accent in particular. Thus, our results indicate that even small amounts of daily exposure to an unfamiliar accent may improve listeners’ ability to understand speakers, but this exposure does not necessarily reduce the cognitive effort associated with processing accented speech, and may not be benefitted by implicit feedback.