Perceptual learning of phonetic convergence

Abstract

Phonetic convergence involves a talker subtly sharing their speaking style with another talker. It is known that speaking style is something perceivers can learn in order to better recognize a talker and a talker's speech. The question arises, can perceivers also learn to better recognize when a talker's speaking style is being shared with another speaker during convegence? To test this question, two convergence experiments were conducted to determine if perceivers (raters) could improve their ability to recognize when talkers were shadowing a specific model. The results showed that perceivers could improve this ability and this improvement generalized to new words and new shadowers of the same model. However, a follow-up experiment showed that this improvement did not generalize to new models and shadowers. This final result suggests that improvement is dependent on learning the shared speaking style of a specific model.