Developmental trajectory for perception of nonnative-accented sentences

Abstract

The ability to recognize words under adverse listening conditions slowly develops throughout childhood. For example, children’s speech perception in noise or reverberation does not reach maturity until adolescence. Much less is known about the developmental trajectory for children’s word recognition under adverse listening conditions stemming from the talker, such as in cases of unfamiliar dialects or accents. To investigate development of word recognition with an unfamiliar accent, 5- to 15-year olds and young adults were presented with native- and Japanese-accented sentences in quiet and noise. Results showed that although 11- to 12-year olds’ word recognition for the native in noise condition was similar to adults, the oldest children in the study (i.e., 14- to 15-year olds) did not demonstrate adult-like word recognition for the nonnative talker, with a large performance gap for the noise-added condition. Therefore, the developmental trajectory for word recognition with unfamiliar accents is quite protracted, similar to word recognition in noisy or reverberant environments. Because children’s performance for the nonnative talker was depressed relative to adults even in quiet, children’s difficulty perceiving unfamiliar accents is likely a consequence of cognitive-linguistic developmental factors or insufficient linguistic experience rather than sensory factors.