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Related Experiment Video

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

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

Published on: September 27, 2024

Foreign Languages Sound Fast: Evidence from Implicit Rate Normalization.

Hans Rutger Bosker^1,2, Eva Reinisch³

¹Max Planck Institute for PsycholinguisticsNijmegen, Netherlands.

Frontiers in Psychology

|July 14, 2017

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Unfamiliar languages may seem faster, influencing how we process speech implicitly. This study found that for German speakers, foreign languages were perceived as faster, affecting vowel perception, while Dutch speakers showed the opposite effect.

Keywords:

L2 speech perception rate normalization second language acquisition speech rate speech segmentation ‘Gabbling Foreigner Illusion’

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Comparing the Frequency Effect Between the Lexical Decision and Naming Tasks in Chinese

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Published on: April 1, 2016

Area of Science:

Psycholinguistics
Speech Perception
Auditory Neuroscience

Background:

Anecdotal evidence suggests unfamiliar languages sound faster than native languages.
Previous research relied on explicit rate judgments, leaving implicit perception effects unexplored.
Understanding implicit speech processing is crucial for language acquisition and perception.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate if perceived differences in foreign language (FL) speech rate affect implicit speech processing.
To examine the effect of FL context on the perception of ambiguous vowels.
To determine if listener's proficiency in the FL modulates the implicit rate perception effect.

Main Methods:

Utilized a speech rate normalization paradigm with ambiguous vowels.
Dutch and German participants listened to rate-matched sentences in their native and a foreign language.
Vowel categorization following carrier sentences measured implicit speech rate perception.

Main Results:

Consistent rate normalization effects were observed for both listener groups.
German listeners showed a bias towards perceiving vowels as longer after foreign language sentences, suggesting they were perceived as faster.
Dutch listeners exhibited an opposite effect, with native language sentences inducing more 'long' vowel responses, which was modulated by spectral control.

Conclusions:

The subjective impression of foreign languages sounding faster can influence implicit speech processing.
Findings suggest that perceived speech rate in a foreign language impacts phonetic perception.
This has implications for understanding how language learners process spoken input and the challenges they may face.