Processing of unfamiliar accents in monolingual and bilingual children: effects of type and amount of accent experience

Levy, Helena; Konieczny, Lars; Hanulíková, Adriana

doi:10.1017/s030500091800051x

Cited by 23 publications

(30 citation statements)

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“…In the repetition task, participants transcribed or repeated utterances (in three speech contexts) that were presented to them along with a static photograph of a given talker (six photographs). To control for inter-speaker variability in the three speech contexts, one speaker for each accent (Standard German, Korean-accented German, Palatinate regional accent of German) was used [for more details on the recordings, see 52 ], and two different versions of each recording were created by minor changes to the effective vocal-tract lengths (see also [ 19 , 53 ]). This allowed for a given experimental list to contain each accent paired with each ethnicity (e.g., the foreign-accented talker in voice version 1 was paired with an Asian prime, while the same foreign-accented talker in voice version 2 was paired with a white European prime).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The women were matched with respect to age, hairstyle, hair length, and ratings of attractiveness and trustworthiness. Acoustic stimuli consisted of 36 short utterances in German, with a total length of 193 words (mean utterance word length 5.3, SD = 0.9; e.g., Das Bild gibt dem Jungen einen Stuhl ‘the picture gives the boy a chair’; taken from [ 52 ]). These were spoken by three female talkers, each representing one speech context: Standard German, Korean-accented German, and Palatinate German.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Do faces speak volumes? Social expectations in speech comprehension and evaluation across three age groups

Hanulíková

2021

PLoS ONE

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An unresolved issue in social perception concerns the effect of perceived ethnicity on speech processing. Bias-based accounts assume conscious misunderstanding of native speech in the case of a speaker classification as nonnative, resulting in negative ratings and poorer comprehension. In contrast, exemplar models of socially indexed speech perception suggest that such negative effects arise only when a contextual cue to the social identity is misleading, i.e. when ethnicity and speech clash with listeners’ expectations. To address these accounts, and to assess ethnicity effects across different age groups, three non-university populations (N = 172) were primed with photographs of Asian and white European women and asked to repeat and rate utterances spoken in three accents (Korean-accented German, a regional German accent, standard German), all embedded in background noise. In line with exemplar models, repetition accuracy increased when the expected and perceived speech matched, but the effect was limited to the foreign accent, and—at the group level—to teens and older adults. In contrast, Asian speakers received the most negative accent ratings across all accents, consistent with a bias-based view, but group distinctions again came into play here, with the effect most pronounced in older adults, and limited to standard German for teens. Importantly, the effects varied across ages, with younger adults showing no effects of ethnicity in either task. The findings suggest that theoretical contradictions are a consequence of methodological choices, which reflect distinct aspects of social information processing.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do faces speak volumes? Social expectations in speech comprehension and evaluation across three age groups

Hanulíková

2021

PLoS ONE

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“…For instance, in the Hong Kong situation, English as a foreign language may be more like an academic skill compared to the more colloquial native Cantonese. Hence, the academic vocabulary is typically much more prominent in English than Cantonese, whereas the reverse is true for the colloquial vocabulary (Levy, Konieczny, & Hanulíková, 2019). If twinning impacts on learning through family interactional factors, the Cantonese academic vocabulary and the English colloquial vocabulary would be the least affected.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effect of Twinning on Chinese and English Vocabulary Knowledge

et al. 2020

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Vocabulary knowledge was tested in a native (Cantonese-Chinese) and foreign (English) language in 150 twins and 150 singletons aged 6-11 years, matched on age, gender, grade level, nonverbal intelligence, parents' education, family income, and number of siblings and household members. The singletons clearly outperformed the twins on the native vocabulary, but this "twinning effect" was much less noticeable for the foreign vocabulary. The effect on English vocabulary was further reduced after exposure to English at home was controlled. Given that these participants learned most of their English in school rather than home, the present findings support the notion that the twinning effect is associated with increased competition for family interaction in twins compared with singletons. Compared to singletons, twins have a unique life experience in relation to sharing and competing for resources from the beginning of life. Such competition often results in shared parental attention and reduced linguistic input from adults, thus delaying language development (

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“…This means that we cannot rule out a possibility that the advantage for multi-dialect children in the experimental group does not stem from their ability to cope better with accent variability, but rather is attributed to their general capacity to learn words (in which case, the home dialect exposure would facilitate performance in both groups). Although research in older children suggest that dialectal experience enhance the ability to cope better with accent input (Levy et al, 2019), the alternative explanation needs further investigation (currently examined in our lab). accents and generalize knowledge to other speakers and accents), ten months later they experience more difficulties in learning words in multi-accent inputas compared to toddlers raised in bi-dialectal familiessuggesting that multi-accent variability might pose initial difficulties for word learning in toddlers with no prior accent experience; yet they seem to 'catch up' with their bi-dialectal peers after being familiarized with the story and/or the accents.…”

Section: Role Of Familiarity With Accent-variability On Word Learning In Multi-accent Inputmentioning

confidence: 94%

“…Research in older children has shown that familiarity with regional accents improves adaptation to unfamiliar accents (Levy et al, 2019). to 0.025 and Bayes Factor analyses were used to examine the strength of evidence presented by our data.…”

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Toddlers raised in multi-dialectal families learn words better in accented speech than those raised in monodialectal families

2021

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Multi-accent environments offer rich but inconsistent language input, as words are produced differently across accents. The current study examined, in two experiments, whether multi-accent variability affects infants’ ability to learn words and whether toddlers’ prior experience with accents modulates learning. In Experiment 1, two-and-a-half-year-old Norwegian toddlers were exposed, in their kindergarten, twice per day for one week, to a child-friendly audiovisual tablet-based e-book containing four novel pseudowords. Half of the toddlers heard the story in three Norwegian accents, whereas the other half heard it in one Norwegian accent. The results revealed no differences between conditions, suggesting that multi-accent variability did not hinder toddlers’ word learning. In experiment 2, two-and-a-half-year-old Norwegian toddlers were exposed, in their homes, for one week, to the e-book featuring three Norwegian accents. The results revealed overall better learning in toddlers raised in bi-dialectal households, as compared to mono-dialectal peers – suggesting that accent exposure benefits learning in multi-accent environments.

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Processing of unfamiliar accents in monolingual and bilingual children: effects of type and amount of accent experience

Cited by 23 publications

References 79 publications

Do faces speak volumes? Social expectations in speech comprehension and evaluation across three age groups

Do faces speak volumes? Social expectations in speech comprehension and evaluation across three age groups

Effect of Twinning on Chinese and English Vocabulary Knowledge

Toddlers raised in multi-dialectal families learn words better in accented speech than those raised in monodialectal families

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