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Task-evoked pupil response for accurately recognized accented speech.

Drew J McLaughlin¹, Kristin J Van Engen¹

¹Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Washington University in St. Louis, One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, Missouri 63130, USAdrewjmclaughlin@wustl.edu, kvanengen@wustl.edu.

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

|March 2, 2020

Summary

Understanding unfamiliar second-language (L2) accents increases cognitive load, even when speech is accurately recognized. This study used pupillometry to measure native English listeners' cognitive effort when processing accented English speech.

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Area of Science:

Psycholinguistics
Cognitive Neuroscience
Speech Perception

Background:

Unfamiliar second-language (L2) accents pose challenges for speech comprehension.
The cognitive load associated with processing L2-accented speech, even when intelligible, is not fully understood.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the cognitive load differences between processing native and L2-accented English speech.
To determine if accurate recognition of L2-accented speech still incurs higher cognitive costs.

Main Methods:

Pupillometry was employed to measure cognitive load in native English listeners.
Listeners perceived intelligible Mandarin Chinese-accented English and American-accented English.

Main Results:

Pupil dilation, an indicator of cognitive load, was significantly greater for unfamiliar L2-accented English compared to native-accented English.
Higher cognitive load was observed even when listeners achieved high accuracy in recognizing the L2-accented speech.

Conclusions:

Processing unfamiliar L2-accented speech imposes a greater cognitive load on native listeners than processing native speech.
Linguistic mismatches between L2 accents and native representations increase cognitive effort, irrespective of recognition accuracy.