Abstract
Listeners improve their ability to understand nonnative speech through exposure. The present study examines the role of semantic predictability during adaptation. Listeners were trained on high-predictability, low-predictability, or semantically anomalous sentences. Results demonstrate that trained participants improve their perception of nonnative speech compared to untrained participants. Adaptation is most robust for the types of sentences participants heard during training; however, semantic predictability during exposure did not impact the amount of adaptation overall. Results show advantages in adaptation specific to the type of speech material, a finding similar to the specificity of adaptation previously demonstrated for individual talkers or accents.
Highlights
The process of understanding speech is, in many situations, relatively effortless
Performance in “matched” training and testing conditions differs from performance in the “unmatched” conditions (v2 1⁄4 8.506, p < 0.01); the two unmatched training conditions do not differ from each other (v2 1⁄4 0.1368, p < 0.7114). The results of this experiment demonstrate that congruency between training stimuli and test stimuli impacts adaptation to an unfamiliar accent, in this case, nonnative speech
Listeners demonstrated improved performance on sentences that are similar to the sentences they were exposed to during training compared to participants who heard a different type of sentences during training
Summary
The process of understanding speech is, in many situations, relatively effortless. Talkers are able to convey their message to listeners who demonstrate little difficulty in understanding. This ease makes situations in which understanding speech is difficult notable These situations can include listening to speech in a noisy environment [e.g., Neff and Green (1987)] or listening to speech from a talker with an unfamiliar accent, including those who are not native speakers of the language of communication [e.g., Munro and Derwing (1995)]. Even in these challenging listening situations, listeners can quickly adapt, improving their ability to understand the speech after exposure to a target talker or accent (Bradlow and Bent, 2008; Clarke and Garrett, 2004; Shannon et al, 1995). We investigate adaptation to nonnative speech as a function of the linguistic and semantic structure of the sentences listeners are exposed to during training
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