Effect of Foreign Accent on Immediate Serial Recall

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Psycholinguistics
• Memory Studies

Background:

• Foreign-accented speech presents unique challenges for listeners.
• Understanding factors that impair memory for accented words is crucial for effective communication and learning.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the specific factors (misperception and encoding disruption) that impair memory for foreign-accented words.
• To determine the impact of presentation modality and interstimulus interval on recall accuracy for accented words.

Main Methods:

• Auditory serial recall of native and Cantonese-accented English words (Experiment 1).
• Manipulation of interstimulus intervals during auditory recall of accented words (Experiment 2).
• Analysis of intrusion errors to identify sources of memory impairment.

Main Results:

• Higher intrusion errors occurred for accented words compared to native words across all serial positions.
• Auditory presentation led to more errors than visual-auditory presentation.
• Extended interstimulus intervals reduced various error types in middle and late serial positions for accented words.

Conclusions:

• Effortful perceptual processing of accented speech causes difficulty, impacting memory encoding.
• Misperception of accented words is a primary source of memory errors.
• Working memory limitations are exacerbated by the increased perceptual demands of processing accented speech.