Perceptual adaptation to non-native speech

Abstract

This study investigated talker-dependent and talker-independent perceptual adaptation to foreign-accent English. Experiment 1 investigated talker-dependent adaptation by comparing native English listeners' recognition accuracy for Chinese-accented English across single and multiple talker presentation conditions. Results showed that the native listeners adapted to the foreign-accented speech over the course of the single talker presentation condition with some variation in the rate and extent of this adaptation depending on the baseline sentence intelligibility of the foreign-accented talker. Experiment 2 investigated talker-independent perceptual adaptation to Chinese-accented English by exposing native English listeners to Chinese-accented English and then testing their perception of English produced by a novel Chinese-accented talker. Results showed that, if exposed to multiple talkers of Chinese-accented English during training, native English listeners could achieve talker-independent adaptation to Chinese-accented English. Taken together, these findings provide evidence for highly flexible speech perception processes that can adapt to speech that deviates substantially from the pronunciation norms in the native talker community along multiple acoustic-phonetic dimensions.

Figure 1

Intelligibility scores for the group of 32 non-native talkers included in the Northwestern University Foreign-Accented English Speech Database (NUFAESD). Error bars indicate the standard deviation. Arrows indicate the four test talkers for Experiment 1.

Figure 1

Average intelligibility scores (% keyword correct transformed on the RAU scale) across all listeners for all four talkers in the multiple-talker presentation format and for each quartile in the single-talker presentation format. Error bars indicate standard errors.

Figure 3

Performance in RAU on the two post-tests in each of the training conditions in Experiment 2. Error bars represent the standard error of the mean. Training conditions are explained in Table 2 and in the accompanying text.