Exploring the Implications of Input Variability for Unfamiliar Accented Speech Perception: A Focused Review and New Hypotheses

Abstract

Children with and without communication disorders have difficulty understanding words and sentences produced by talkers with unfamiliar characteristics, such as unfamiliar accents. To date, few studies have investigated how this difficulty manifests in linguistically diverse children. Studies of monolingual children have found that lexical and phonological skills predict accurate perception. For linguistically diverse children, there are differences in the structure of their linguistic input relative to their monolingual peers. These differences in their linguistic input influence their lexical and phonological development, suggesting that they may also differ in how they perceive unfamiliar accented speech. In this paper we present different hypotheses for how input variability might affect unfamiliar accented speech perception. Then, we conduct a focused review of the literature on how input variability affects early linguistic development for bilingual and bidialectal children. We link this information to the literature on how children with and without language disorders understand unfamiliar accented speech to identify important areas for future inquiry. Determining how input variability interacts with linguistic skills to predict unfamiliar speech perception is a crucial area for future inquiry. Effective clinical recommendations and educational accommodations require understanding of the linguistic skills and experience that support accurate variable speech perception for diverse populations.

Categorization of second language accents by bilingual and multilingual listeners

“…For example, the theory of enhanced structural sensitivity proposes that mastering two languages improves the awareness of bilinguals in phonological, morphological and syntactic structures (Kuo & Anderson, 2010). Moreover, it has been suggested that bilinguals exhibit heightened flexibility in phonetic categories compared to monolinguals, characterized by broader phonetic boundaries (Cowan & Olmstead, 2023;Levi et al, 2019). Supporting this notion, Georgiou et al ( 2024) discovered that bidialectal speakers demonstrated greater accuracy than monolinguals in discriminating L2 contrasts, potentially attributed to their proficiency in the additional variety (i.e., dialect) and the flexibility in their vowel categories.…”

“…For example, the theory of enhanced structural sensitivity proposes that mastering two languages improves the awareness of bilinguals in phonological, morphological and syntactic structures (Kuo & Anderson, 2010). Moreover, it has been suggested that bilinguals exhibit heightened flexibility in phonetic categories compared to monolinguals, characterized by broader phonetic boundaries (Cowan & Olmstead, 2023; Levi et al., 2019). Supporting this notion, Georgiou et al.…”

“…Additionally, the authors interpreted this finding on the basis of the meaningful learning of how variation is used in society by multilingual children, as they need to utilize linguistic information to handle relationships within the community to a greater extent compared to monolingual children. An alternative expectation for enhanced performance among bi‐/multilinguals compared to monolinguals stems from the proposition of more adaptable speech sound categories and heightened phonetic flexibility in the former individuals (Cowan & Olmstead, 2023; Levi et al., 2019). This proposition is corroborated by the findings of Georgiou et al.…”