Differential Effects of Educational and Occupational Cognitive Reserve on Foreign-Accented Speech Evaluation by Older...

Background/Objectives: Older adults are increasingly exposed to foreign-accented speech in everyday communication, yet such speech is known to increase perceptual and cognitive demands even when intelligibility is preserved. While previous research has documented age-related differences in processing foreign-accented speech, less is known about how individual differences in cognitive reserve shape older adults' subjective evaluations of accented speech. The present study examined whether cognitive reserve is associated with senior listeners' ratings of foreign-accented English across multiple perceptual dimensions. Methods: Thirty native English-speaking British adults aged 66-84 years completed an online foreign accent rating task. Participants rated non-native English speech on four dimensions: perceived accent strength, comprehensibility, perceived intelligibility and listening effort. Cognitive reserve was operationalized using a multidimensional proxy approach incorporating educational attainment, occupational complexity and leisure activities. These components were combined into a composite cognitive reserve score and also examined separately. The ratings were analyzed using cumulative link mixed models with the participant as a random intercept. Self-reported experience with foreign-accented speech was included as a covariate in all models. Results: Composite cognitive reserve showed no significant association with comprehensibility, perceived intelligibility, or listening effort and only a marginal negative association with perceived foreign-accent strength. When cognitive reserve was decomposed into its components, educational cognitive reserve significantly predicted higher comprehensibility and perceived intelligibility ratings and higher listening effort ratings. Occupational cognitive reserve showed significant effects in the opposite direction for comprehensibility, perceived intelligibility and listening effort; however, it was also associated with lower perceived accent strength. Self-reported experience with foreign-accented speech was not a significant predictor for any outcome. Conclusions: These findings indicate that cognitive reserve does not exert a uniform influence on older adults' perception of foreign-accented speech. Instead, occupational and educational components of cognitive reserve show distinct and opposing associations with perceptual evaluations. The results highlight the importance of using multidimensional approaches to cognitive reserve when examining individual differences in speech perception in later adulthood.