Effects of experience on the processing of phonetic contrasts in foreign-accented Spanish

Abstract

Non-native accented speech is typically less intelligible than unaccented speech. However, intelligibility improves with experience. Experience might improve intelligibility by guiding listeners’ expectations regarding the systematic divergence of specific acoustic cues from the native norm within the non-native context. If an accent imposes predictable changes on the acoustic cue patterns present in speech, then listeners experienced with that accent may change their judgment of what was said based on whether or not it was perceived in an accented context. In the present study, two groups of native speakers of Spanish with and without significant experience with English-accented Spanish listened to Spanish sentences produced with and without a strong English accent. Each sentence ended in a Spanish word produced with or without English accent, but the voice onset time (VOT) of the first consonant in the word was artificially varied to form a continuum from bata (robe) to pata (paw). Experienced listeners...