title: Automaticity and Stability of Adaptation to a Foreign-Accented Speaker.
abstract: In three cross-modal priming experiments we asked whether adaptation to a foreign-accented speaker is automatic, and whether adaptation can be seen after a long delay between initial exposure and test. Dutch listeners were exposed to a Hebrew-accented Dutch speaker with two types of Dutch words: those that contained [I] (globally accented words), and those in which the Dutch [i] was shortened to [I] (specific accent marker words). Experiment 1, which served as a baseline, showed that native Dutch participants showed facilitatory priming for globally accented, but not specific accent, words. In experiment 2, participants performed a 3.5-minute phoneme monitoring task, and were tested on their comprehension of the accented speaker 24 hours later using the same cross-modal priming task as in experiment 1. During the phoneme monitoring task, listeners were asked to detect a consonant that was not strongly accented. In experiment 3, the delay between exposure and test was extended to 1 week. Listeners in experiments 2 and 3 showed facilitatory priming for both globally accented and specific accent marker words. Together, these results show that adaptation to a foreign-accented speaker can be rapid and automatic, and can be observed after a prolonged delay in testing.
authors.forename: Marijt J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Witteman
authors.forename: Neil P
authors.initials: NP
authors.lastname: Bardhan
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Weber
authors.forename: James M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: McQueen
mesh_terms: D001332:Automatism; D032882:Comprehension; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D010700:Phonetics; D011578:Psycholinguistics; D060865:Repetition Priming; D012153:Retention, Psychology; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013067:Speech Perception; D055815:Young Adult