The influence of neighborhood density on the recognition of Spanish-accented words.

Abstract

Foreign-accented speech is more difficult to recognize than the same words produced by a native speaker because the accented speech may activate many additional competitors, or it may strongly activate a single, but incorrect, word during lexical retrieval. Experiments 1 and 2 examined the recognition of native-produced and foreign-accented words varying in neighborhood density with auditory lexical decision and perceptual identification tasks, respectively. Experiment 1 found increased reaction times (RTs), especially for accented dense words. Analysis of misperceptions from Experiment 2 found that the mean number of phonologically distinct misperception tokens was higher for native than accented stimuli, suggesting that accented speech does not tend to activate more lexical candidates. Furthermore, a higher proportion of misperceptions in the accented condition (71%) compared with the native condition (58%) was accounted for by the most frequently reported misperception token, suggesting that accented speech instead tends to strongly activate 1 particular neighbor of the target word during lexical competition. Moreover, systematic phonemic substitutions in the misperceptions suggest that lawful acoustic-phonetic variations introduced by the accented speaker's L1 (native language) play a crucial role in determining which neighbor is activated as a strong competitor.

Influencing the time and space of lexical competition: The effect of gradient foreign accentedness.

“…The discrepancy between the present results and those of Chan and Vitevitch (2015) may be attributable to two points related to the nature of their stimuli. To minimize the potential for a ceiling effect, Chan and Vitevitch (2015) presented the native stimuli in a small amount of white noise, while leaving the non-native stimuli in the clear. This addition of noise may have been enough to expand the competitor space related to the native stimuli, analogous to the findings of Scharenborg et al (2018).…”

“…This indicates that the competitor space induced by a word expanded with greater accent strength of the token. This effect is similar to that for speech in noise found by Scharenborg et al (2018), who concluded that their results align with the "many-additional-competitor scenario" proposed by Chan and Vitevitch (2015). In this respect, the present results also support the "many-additional-competitor scenario" over the "single-strong-competitor scenario."…”

“…In this respect, the present results also support the "many-additional-competitor scenario" over the "single-strong-competitor scenario." In their study, Chan and Vitevitch (2015) specifically examined the interaction between the presence of a foreign-accent and neighborhood density, finding a greater number of unique misperceptions to native stimuli (in noise) relative to foreign-accented stimuli. Additionally, Figure 7.…”

Using network science in the language sciences and clinic

“…Numerous studies have found that neighborhood density influences various language processes: (1) the acquisition of sounds in children (Gierut, Morrisette & Champion, 1999), (2) the acquisition of words in children (Storkel, 2004), and in second language learners (Stamer & Vitevitch, 2012; see also computational work in Vitevitch & Storkel, 2013) (3) spoken word recognition in young adults with no history of speech, language, or hearing impairment in English and in Spanish (Luce & Pisoni, 1998; see also Vitevitch, 2002; Vitevitch & Luce 1998; 1999; Vitevitch & Rodriguez, 2005), in older adults with no history of speech, language, or hearing impairment (e.g., Sommers, 1996), and in post-lingually deafened adults who had a cochlear implant (Kaiser, Kirk, Lachs & Pisoni, 2003), as well as the recognition of accented speech (Chan & Vitevitch, in press; Imai, Walley & Flege, 2005), (4) spoken word production in children who stutter (Arnold, Conture & Ohde, 2005), in young adults with fluent speech in English and in Spanish (Munson & Solomon, 2004; Vitevitch, 1997, 2002; Vitevitch & Stamer, 2006), in older adults with fluent speech (Vitevitch & Sommers, 2003), in individuals with aphasia (Gordon, 2002), and even (5) reading by young adults with no history of speech, language, or hearing impairment (Yates, Locker & Simpson, 2004). For a more complete review of how neighborhood density and phonotactic probability influence the perception and production of spoken words see Vitevitch and Luce (2014).…”

Questioning the role of lexical contrastiveness in phonological development: Converging evidence from perception and production studies

“…Importantly, we do not mean to dismiss the theoretical or practical relevance of the lexicon and lexical neighbourhoods in other areas of phonological representation and processing. Dense lexical neighbourhoods such as those that characterize the lexicons of more advanced child learners or adult speakers constitute powerful networks for the processing of phonological representations, whose effects have been noted in tasks such as word learning, lexical retrieval, and the detection of speech errors (Storkel 2006, 2011; Storkel et al 2006; White and Morgan 2008; see also Stamer and Vitevitch 2012; Chan and Vitevitch 2015 for similar observations in second-language development). Behavioural differences in phonological processing observed across different age groups may also be tied to the relative degree of inter-connectedness within lexicons, for which lexicon size does matter (see also Pierrehumbert 2003, Munson et al 2005, and references therein for additional discussion).…”