Caroline Floccia

Does a regional accent perturb speech processing

The processing costs involved in regional accent normalization were evaluated by measuring differences in lexical decision latencies for targets placed at the end of sentences with different French regional accents. Over a series of 6 experiments, the authors examined the time course of comprehension disruption by manipulating the duration and presentation conditions of accented speech. Taken together, the findings of these experiments indicate that regional accent normalization involves a short-term adjustment mechanism that develops as a certain amount of accented signal is available, resulting in a temporary perturbation in speech processing.

Discrimination of pitch contours by neonates

With the high-amplitude sucking procedure, newborns were presented with two lists of phonetically varied Japanese words differing in pitch contour. Discrimination of the lists was found, thus indicating that newborns are able to extract pitch contour information at the word level.

Regional and foreign accent processing in English: can listeners adapt?

Recent data suggest that the first presentation of a foreign accent triggers a delay in word identification, followed by a subsequent adaptation. This study examines under what conditions the delay resumes to baseline level. The delay will be experimentally induced by the presentation of sentences spoken to listeners in a foreign or a regional accent as part of a lexical decision task for words placed at the end of sentences. Using a blocked design of accents presentation, Experiment 1 shows that accent changes cause a temporary perturbation in reaction times, followed by a smaller but long-lasting delay. Experiment 2 shows that the initial perturbation is dependent on participants’ expectations about the task. Experiment 3 confirms that the subsequent long-lasting delay in word identification does not habituate after repeated exposure to the same accent. Results suggest that comprehensibility of accented speech, as measured by reaction times, does not benefit from accent exposure, contrary to intelligibility.

Bias for Consonantal Information over Vocalic Information in 30-Month-Olds: Cross-Linguistic Evidence from French and English.

Using a name-based categorization task, Nazzi found in 2005 that French-learning 20-month-olds can make use of one-feature consonantal contrasts between new labels but fail to do so with one-feature vocalic contrasts. This asymmetry was interpreted as developmental evidence for the proposal that consonants play a more important role than vowels at the lexical level. In the current study using the same task, we first show that by 30 months French-learning infants can make use of one-feature vocalic contrasts (e.g., /pize/-/pyze/). Second, we show that in a situation where infants must neglect either a consonantal one-feature change or a vocalic one-feature change (e.g., match a /pide/ with either a /tide/ or a /pyde/), both French- and English-learning 30-month-olds choose to neglect the vocalic change rather than the consonantal change. We argue that these results suggest that by 30 months of age, infants still give less weight to vocalic information than to consonantal information in a lexically related task even though they are able to process fine vocalic information.

Morae and Syllables: Rhythmical Basis of Speech Representations in Neonates

Are neonates sensitive to the different rhythmical units that are used in different spoken languages? And do they use these units to represent and discriminate multisyllabic words? In the present study, we used the High-Amplitude Sucking procedure to test whether 3-day-old French infants discriminate lists of Japanese words. The lists of words differed either in the number of syllabic units or in the number of sub-syllabic units such as morae. In Experiment 1, infants heard bisyllabic versus trisyllabic words (e.g.: iga vs. hekiga); in Experiment 2, they were presented with bimoraic versus trimoraic bisyllabic words (e.g.: iga vs. iNga). The results corroborate those obtained by Bijeljac-Babic, Bertoncini, and Mehler (1993), providing further evidence that neonates discriminate bisyllabic from trisyllabic words. In contrast, neonates do not appear to discriminate bisyllabic words that vary in number of sub-syllabic units. It is proposed that syllables are particularly salient units during the initial stage of speech processing, irrespective of which language and rhythmical structure is heard.

Categorization of Regional and Foreign Accent in 5- to 7-Year-Old British Children.

This study examines childrens ability to detect accent-related information in connected speech. British English children aged 5 and 7 years old were asked to discriminate between their home accent from an Irish accent or a French accent in a sentence categorization task. Using a preliminary accent rating task with adult listeners, it was first verified that the level of accentedness was similar across the two unfamiliar accents. Results showed that whereas the younger children group behaved just above chance level in this task, the 7-year-old group could reliably distinguish between these variations of their own language, but were significantly better at detecting the foreign accent than the regional accent. These results extend and replicate a previous study (Girard, Floccia, & Goslin, 2008) in which it was found that 5-year-old French children could detect a foreign accent better than a regional accent. The factors underlying the relative lack of awareness for a regional accent as opposed to a foreign accent in childhood are discussed, especially the amount of exposure, the learnability of both types of accents, and a possible difference in the amount of vowels versus consonants variability, for which acoustic measures of vowel formants and plosives voice onset time are provided.

Linguistic Processing of Accented Speech Across the Lifespan

In most of the world, people have regular exposure to multiple accents. Therefore, learning to quickly process accented speech is a prerequisite to successful communication. In this paper, we examine work on the perception of accented speech across the lifespan, from early infancy to late adulthood. Unfamiliar accents initially impair linguistic processing by infants, children, younger adults, and older adults, but listeners of all ages come to adapt to accented speech. Emergent research also goes beyond these perceptual abilities, by assessing links with production and the relative contributions of linguistic knowledge and general cognitive skills. We conclude by underlining points of convergence across ages, and the gaps left to face in future work.

Perception and awareness of accents in young children

This study examines childrens metaphonological awareness for accent-related information in connected speech. In the first experiment, 5- to 6-year-old French-speaking children were asked to discriminate between Southern and Northern accented French in a sentence categorization task. It was found that these children were not able to reliably distinguish between these native variations of their own language, but were able to distinguish between their own accent and a strong foreign accent in Experiment 2. These findings were also replicated using a speaker discrimination task in Experiment 3, where children were asked to detect pairs of speakers sharing the same accent amongst speaker pairs with different accents. Whilst these experiments have shown that 5- to 6-year-old children do not use non-familiar regional accents as a discriminatory cue, they are able to perceive the differences between accents, as demonstrated in the AX task used in Experiment 4. The factors underlying the relative lack of awareness for a regional accent as opposed to a foreign accent in childhood are discussed, especially regarding the amount of exposure and the learnability of both types of accents.

An ERP investigation of regional and foreign accent processing.

This study used event-related potentials (ERPs) to examine whether we employ the same normalisation mechanisms when processing words spoken with a regional accent or foreign accent. Our results showed that the Phonological Mapping Negativity (PMN) following the onset of the final word of sentences spoken with an unfamiliar regional accent was greater than for those produced in the listeners own accent, whilst PMN for foreign accented speech was reduced. Foreign accents also resulted in a reduction in N400 amplitude when compared to both unfamiliar regional accents and the listeners own accent, with no significant difference found between the N400 of the regional and home accents. These results suggest that regional accent related variations are normalised at the earliest stages of spoken word recognition, requiring less top-down lexical intervention than foreign accents.

Unfamiliar voice discrimination for short stimuli in newborns

In order to determine the minimal information required for newborns to discriminate unfamiliar voices two experiments were performed using the presentation of single disyllabic words uttered by male and female speakers. In the first experiment, utilizing the standard high-amplitude-sucking procedure, no significant discrimination was obtained. Hypothesizing that this failure in discrimination could be due to a deficient attention at the unique moment of stimulus change, a second experiment was performed in which the same to-be-discriminated stimuli alternated every minute and in which multiple tokens of the same word were presented to increase stimulus variability. Evidence for voice discrimination was obtained, suggesting that newborns are able to characterize unfamiliar voices on the basis of restrained vocal-tract related information and minor prosodic information. Remarks addressing the consequences of stimulus organization upon attentional demands in experimental procedures in young infants are also presented.