title: The influence of talker and foreign-accent variability on spoken word identification.
abstract: In spoken word identification and memory tasks, stimulus variability from numerous sources impairs performance. In the current study, the influence of foreign-accent variability on spoken word identification was evaluated in two experiments. Experiment 1 used a between-subjects design to test word identification in noise in single-talker and two multiple-talker conditions: multiple talkers with the same accent and multiple talkers with different accents. Identification performance was highest in the single-talker condition, but there was no difference between the single-accent and multiple-accent conditions. Experiment 2 further explored word recognition for multiple talkers in single-accent versus multiple-accent conditions using a mixed design. A detriment to word recognition was observed in the multiple-accent condition compared to the single-accent condition, but the effect differed across the language backgrounds tested. These results demonstrate that the processing of foreign-accent variation may influence word recognition in ways similar to other sources of variability (e.g., speaking rate or style) in that the inclusion of multiple foreign accents can result in a small but significant performance decrement beyond the multiple-talker effect.
authors: Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, Indiana University, 200 South Jordan Avenue, Bloomington, Indiana 47405, USA. tbent@indiana.edu
authors: Tessa
authors: T
authors: Bent
authors: Rachael Frush
authors: RF
authors: Holt
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001301:Audiometry, Pure-Tone; D001302:Audiometry, Speech; D001309:Auditory Threshold; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D009622:Noise / Q000009:adverse effects; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013065:Speech Intelligibility; D013067:Speech Perception; D055815:Young Adult