Abstract
Infants struggle to understand familiar words spoken in unfamiliar accents. Here, we examine whether accent exposure facilitates accent-specific adaptation. Two types of pre-exposure were examined: video-based (i.e., listening to pre-recorded stories; Experiment 1) and live interaction (reading books with an experimenter; Experiments 2 and 3). After video-based exposure, Canadian English-learning 15- to 18-month-olds failed to recognize familiar words spoken in an unfamiliar accent. However, after face-to-face interaction with a Mandarin-accented talker, infants showed enhanced recognition for words produced in Mandarin English compared to Australian English. Infants with live exposure to an Australian talker were not similarly facilitated, perhaps due to the lower vocabulary scores of the infants assigned to the Australian exposure condition. Thus, live exposure can facilitate accent adaptation, but this ability is fragile in young infants and is likely influenced by vocabulary size and the specific mapping between the speaker and the listener's phonological system.
Highlights
Adult listeners excel at flexibly adapting to pronunciation variations produced by speakers of different accents (e.g., Clarke & Garrett, 2004; Cutler & Broersma, 2005; see Cristia, Seidl, Vaughn, Schmale, Bradlow & Floccia, 2012 for a review)
A linear mixed-effects regression model was constructed with the exposure phase Story Reader (Australian-accented talker vs. Mandarin-accented talker; contrast coded) and Accent Familiarity (Unfamiliaraccented talker vs Familiar-accented talker; contrast coded) and Age in months
There was no main effect of Story Reader meaning that overall children who interacted with the Australian speaker did not perform significantly better in the test phase compared to children who interacted with the Mandarin speaker, b = 0.01, SE = 0.02, t(61.58) = 0.52, p = .602, d = 0.13
Summary
Adult listeners excel at flexibly adapting to pronunciation variations produced by speakers of different accents (e.g., Clarke & Garrett, 2004; Cutler & Broersma, 2005; see Cristia, Seidl, Vaughn, Schmale, Bradlow & Floccia, 2012 for a review). Johnson the type of exposure can play a significant role in predicting how successful young toddlers will be at adapting to an unfamiliar accent (e.g., van Heugten & Johnson, 2014). We investigate these issues by providing toddlers with either live or video-taped exposure to an unfamiliar-accented talker. In the test phase, we examine the impact of exposure type on children’s ability to recognize words produced by that same talker versus another talker speaking in a different unfamiliar accent
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