Skip to page navigation menu Skip entire header
Brown University
Skip 13 subheader links

Accent Perception and Adaptation During Lexical Access: Expand, Shift, or Pathway

Description

Abstract:
Speech is extremely variable along many different dimensions. One source of variability listeners often encounter is accented speech, in which phonological units can systematically differ from the listener’s native categories. This dissertation presents five experiments testing how listeners adapt to accent-based phonological variability, comparing the results within the framework of three competing hypotheses of phonological adaptation. Experiments 1A and 1B demonstrate that listeners store salient features of somewhat-familiar accents, Experiment 2B provides some evidence that listeners rapidly adapt to a novel accent, although they do not accept new lexical exemplars easily, and Experiment 3 shows that listeners treat accented shifts differently from mispronunciations, adapting to accented speech more quickly. Together, these experiments provided some evidence for all three hypotheses of phonological adaptation, suggesting that listeners may make use of a number of different strategies in order to successfully adapt to variability in the speech signal.
Notes:
Thesis (Ph. D.)--Brown University, 2021

Citation

Franklin, Lauren R., "Accent Perception and Adaptation During Lexical Access: Expand, Shift, or Pathway" (2021). Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychological Sciences Theses and Dissertations. Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library. https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:dntrasr9/

Relations

Collection: