Age and understanding speakers with Spanish or Taiwanese accents.
This pilot study concerned the intelligibility of accented speech for listeners of different ages. 72 native speakers of English, representing three age groups (20-39, 40-59, 60 and older) listened to words and sentences produced by native speakers of English, Taiwanese, and Spanish. Listeners transcribed words and sentences. Listeners also rated speakers' comprehensibility, i.e., listeners' perceptions of difficulty in understanding utterances, and accentedness, i.e., how strong a speaker's foreign accent is perceived to be. On intelligibility measures, older adults had significantly greater difficulty in understanding individuals with accented speech than the other two age groups. Listeners, regardless of age, were more likely to provide correct responses if they perceived the speaker easier to understand. Ratings of comprehensibility were highly correlated with ratings of accentedness.
Burda
Angela N
AN
Department of Communicative Disorders, University of Northern Iowa, Communications Arts Center, Cedar Falls 50614-0356, USA. angela.burda@uni.edu
Scherz
Julie A
JA
Hageman
Carlin F
CF
Edwards
Harold T
HT
D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging; D003469:Culture; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D007802:Language; D008875:Middle Aged; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013063:Speech Discrimination Tests; D013065:Speech Intelligibility; D013067:Speech Perception