Development of semantic context facilitation for nonnative-accented speech

Abstract

Children can use sentence context to facilitate their understanding of both native and nonnative speakers and this benefit increases with age. In this study, 5- to 7-year-old children (n = 90) and adults (n = 30) were compared on their ability to benefit from sentence context. In addition, we examined whether receptive vocabulary accounts for variability in spoken word recognition differently for words spoken in sentences versus in isolation. Stimuli were produced by either native- or nonnative-accented (Japanese and Spanish) speakers. Listeners first identified words in isolation that had been extracted from meaningful sentences. Then they completed the NIH Toolbox Picture Vocabulary Test. Finally, they identified the same spoken words embedded in the original sentences. Children and adults showed significant word recognition advantages for the sentence condition compared to the isolated word condition for both native and nonnative speakers. However, adults showed a much larger benefit from sentence context than the children in the nonnative but not the native condition. Further, older children benefited from context more than younger children. Finally, receptive vocabulary was positively correlated with nonnative recognition of words in sentences but not in isolation for both children and adults, suggesting that better receptive vocabulary enhances use of context for nonnative speech.