The influence of long-term exposure on the perception of foreign-accented speech

Abstract

We recognize spoken words in our native language with relative ease. Yet, difficulties arise when we encounter a talker with an accent. Short-term lab exposure leads to observable improvements in comprehension of foreign-accented speech. Life-long exposure markedly improves perception of within language variability (i.e. dialects) and refines listeners’ representations. Less is known about the benefits of long-term exposure to foreign-accented speech. We used cross-modal identity priming to investigate if long-term exposure to Chinese-accented English by native speakers of American English would modulate their processing of Chinese-accented speech. We predicted that listeners with long-term exposure to the foreign accent, assumed based on long-term residence in the New York City area, should be faster and more accurate at recognizing Chinese-accented words than listeners without long-term exposure, assumed based on long-term residence in less linguistically diverse areas. Our preliminary results present a surprising finding indicating that the assumed long-term exposure had the opposite effect, where the listeners with long-term exposure to a foreign accent are unexpectedly slower and less accurate than the listeners without long-term exposure. Our results suggest that long-term exposure does affect listeners’ abilities to recognize and represent foreign-accented spoken words.