Linguistic Processing of Accented Speech Across the Lifespan

Cristià, Alejandrina; Seidl, Amanda; Vaughn, Charlotte; Schmale, Rachel; Bradlow, Ann R.; Floccia, Caroline

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00479

Cited by 125 publications

(112 citation statements)

References 146 publications

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“…Varying results have been reported regarding the relative benefit of training for different age groups (Cristia et al, 2012). For this experiment, it is predicted that younger adults will show higher overall speech recognition scores than older adults.…”

Section: Research Questions and Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 94%

“…These difficulties can be exacerbated in more challenging listening circumstances, such as listening to foreignaccented speech in the presence of noise (Gordon-Salant et al, 2010b). It has been suggested that this poorer performance may be related to cognitive decline associated with aging, as well as to auditory temporal processing deficits (Cristia et al, 2012).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Adaptation to novel foreign-accented speech and retention of benefit following training: Influence of aging and hearing loss

Bieber

Gordon‐Salant

2017

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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Adaptation to speech with a foreign accent is possible through prior exposure to talkers with that same accent. For young listeners with normal hearing, short term, accent-independent adaptation to a novel foreign accent is also facilitated through exposure training with multiple foreign accents. In the present study, accent-independent adaptation is examined in younger and older listeners with normal hearing and older listeners with hearing loss. Retention of training benefit is additionally explored. Stimuli for testing and training were HINT sentences recorded by talkers with nine distinctly different accents. Following two training sessions, all listener groups showed a similar increase in speech perception for a novel foreign accent. While no group retained this benefit at one week post-training, results of a secondary reaction time task revealed a decrease in reaction time following training, suggesting reduced listening effort. Examination of listeners' cognitive skills reveals a positive relationship between working memory and speech recognition ability. The present findings indicate that, while this no-feedback training paradigm for foreign-accented English is successful in promoting short term adaptation for listeners, this paradigm is not sufficient in facilitation of perceptual learning with lasting benefits for younger or older listeners.

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Section: Research Questions and Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 94%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Adaptation to novel foreign-accented speech and retention of benefit following training: Influence of aging and hearing loss

Bieber

Gordon‐Salant

2017

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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“…The ability to recognize speech in adverse listening conditions is a robust and flexible mechanism that is supported by our ability to "tune in" to unfamiliar or distorted speech (for reviews, see Samuel and Kraljic, 2009;Cristia et al, 2012;Mattys et al, 2012). Such perceptual adaptation can be defined as improved speech recognition (that is, accessing the semantic content of the speech message through perceiving the acoustic signal) as a result of exposure to an unfamiliar speech type.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cognitive predictors of perceptual adaptation to accented speech

Banks

Gowen

Munro

et al. 2015

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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The present study investigated the effects of inhibition, vocabulary knowledge, and working memory on perceptual adaptation to accented speech. One hundred young, normal-hearing adults listened to sentences spoken in a constructed, unfamiliar accent presented in speech-shaped background noise. Speech Reception Thresholds (SRTs) corresponding to 50% speech recognition accuracy provided a measurement of adaptation to the accented speech. Stroop, vocabulary knowledge, and working memory tests were performed to measure cognitive ability. Participants adapted to the unfamiliar accent as revealed by a decrease in SRTs over time. Better inhibition (lower Stroop scores) predicted greater and faster adaptation to the unfamiliar accent. Vocabulary knowledge predicted better recognition of the unfamiliar accent, while working memory had a smaller, indirect effect on speech recognition mediated by vocabulary score. Results support a top-down model for successful adaptation to, and recognition of, accented speech; they add to recent theories that allocate a prominent role for executive function to effective speech comprehension in adverse listening conditions.

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“…Listeners' awareness of foreign accents in speech has received considerable attention in speech research for a number of years (e.g., Flege, Munro, & MacKay, 1995;Munro, Derwing, & Burgess, 2010). Less attention has been paid to the question of what a foreign accent means for language comprehension (for a recent review see, Cristia et al, 2012). How does prior language experience shape the way listeners adapt to a foreign accent?…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Treack or trit: Adaptation to genuine and arbitrary foreign accents by monolingual and bilingual listeners

Weber

Betta

McQueen

2014

Journal of Phonetics

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Two cross-modal priming experiments examined two questions about word recognition in foreign-accented speech: Does accent adaptation occur only for genuine accents markers, and does adaptation depend on language experience? We compared recognition of words spoken with canonical, genuinely-accented and arbitrarily-accented vowels. In Experiment 1, an Italian speaker pronounced vowels in English prime words canonically, or by lengthening /ɪ/ as in a genuine Italian accent (*/tri:k/ for trick), or by arbitrarily shortening /i:/ (*/trɪt/ for treat). Lexical-decision times to subsequent visual target words showed different priming effects in three listener groups. Monolingual native English listeners recognized variants with lengthened but not shortened vowels. Bilingual nonnative Italian-English listeners, who could not reliably distinguish vowel length, recognized both variants. Bilingual nonnative Dutch-English listeners also recognized both variants. In Experiment 2, bilingual Dutch-English listeners recognized Dutch words with genuinely-and arbitrarily-accented vowels (spoken by a native Italian with lengthened and shortened vowels respectively), but recognized words with canonical vowels more easily than words with accented vowels. These results suggest that adaptation to genuine accent markers arises for monolingual and bilingual listeners alike and can occur in native and nonnative languages, but that bilinguals can adapt to arbitrary accent markers better than monolinguals.

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Linguistic Processing of Accented Speech Across the Lifespan

Cited by 125 publications

References 146 publications

Adaptation to novel foreign-accented speech and retention of benefit following training: Influence of aging and hearing loss

Adaptation to novel foreign-accented speech and retention of benefit following training: Influence of aging and hearing loss

Cognitive predictors of perceptual adaptation to accented speech

Treack or trit: Adaptation to genuine and arbitrary foreign accents by monolingual and bilingual listeners

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