English native monolingual and simultaneous English/Spanish bilingual listeners? perception of foreign accented speech: Cross-language effects on accented speech perception

Abstract

The current study was designed to explore whether English monolingual listeners (ENM) perceive foreign- accented speech differently from English/ Spanish simultaneous bilingual listeners (ESB) who learned both languages simultaneously at early age. Previous studies suggest that listener's perception of foreign-accented speech is affected by listener's L1 phonological systems. When exposed to two languages simultaneously, bilinguals might be able to exploit the phonetic categories of the two languages in speech perception (Best, 1994; Goetry and Kolinsky 2000). It would be possible that simultaneous exposure to multi- languages at the early age helps SB listeners to tolerate foreign accents in speech more resulting in better understanding of accented speech. It would be also possible that if two phonological systems of SB listeners interact each other resulting in poorer understanding of foreign accented speech than ENM listeners. ENM and SB listeners completed a speech perception task that is accent ratings of an English passage spoken by Korean English bilinguals and Korean-native speakers. Results might suggest the effect of language exposure on accented speech perception.