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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 18, 2026

Foreign Accent and Forensic Speaker Identification in Voice Lineups: The Influence of Acoustic Features Based on Prosody
09:09

Foreign Accent and Forensic Speaker Identification in Voice Lineups: The Influence of Acoustic Features Based on Prosody

Published on: September 27, 2024

Foreign subtitles help but native-language subtitles harm foreign speech perception.

Holger Mitterer1, James M McQueen

  • 1Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. holger.mitterer@mpi.nl

Plos One
|November 18, 2009
PubMed
Summary

Subtitles can help you learn foreign accents. While native-language subtitles hinder speech learning, foreign-language subtitles improve it by clarifying words and sounds.

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Area of Science:

  • Psycholinguistics
  • Speech Perception
  • Second Language Acquisition

Background:

  • Understanding foreign speech is challenging due to unfamiliar sound-word mappings.
  • Native language lexical knowledge aids in interpreting unusual speech sounds.
  • Subtitles offer lexical information that may support foreign speech perception.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate if subtitles aid perceptual learning of foreign speech accents.
  • To determine the effect of native vs. foreign language subtitles on speech learning.

Main Methods:

  • Dutch participants watched videos of English accents (Scottish/Australian) with Dutch, English, or no subtitles.
  • Participants then repeated audio fragments of both accents.
  • Performance was measured by the accuracy of repeating novel speech fragments.

Main Results:

  • Repeating novel fragments was impaired after exposure to Dutch subtitles.
  • Repeating novel fragments was improved after exposure to English subtitles.
  • Native-language subtitles caused lexical interference, while foreign-language subtitles facilitated learning.

Conclusions:

  • Native-language subtitles can interfere with foreign speech sound learning.
  • Foreign-language subtitles enhance foreign speech perception by providing lexical context.
  • Lexical information is crucial for adapting to and learning new speech sound patterns.