Regional and foreign accent processing in English: can listeners adapt?

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Auditory Perception
• Speech Processing

Background:

• Foreign accent processing can initially delay word identification.
• Listeners may adapt to accented speech over time, but the conditions for this adaptation are not fully understood.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the conditions under which processing delays for accented speech return to baseline.
• To examine the impact of accent changes, listener expectations, and repeated exposure on accented speech comprehension.

Main Methods:

• Lexical decision task using sentences with foreign or regional accents.
• Blocked design of accent presentation across three experiments.
• Measurement of reaction times to assess word identification delays.

Main Results:

• Accent changes caused a temporary perturbation in reaction times, followed by a persistent, smaller delay.
• The initial delay was influenced by participants' expectations.
• Repeated exposure to the same accent did not lead to habituation of the subsequent delay.

Conclusions:

• Comprehensibility of accented speech, indicated by reaction times, does not improve with exposure.
• Unlike intelligibility, speech comprehensibility does not benefit from adaptation to accented speech.