Howell Peter, Barry William, Vinson David
Department of Psychology, University College London, Gower St., London WC 1E 6BT, England.
Percept Psychophys. 2006 Jan;68(1):139-53. doi: 10.3758/bf03193664.
This work is concerned with the processing or representational level at which accent forms learned early in life can change and with whether alteration to a speaker's auditory environment can elicit an original accent. In Experiment 1, recordings were made of an equal number of (1) speakers living in the home counties (HC) of Britain (around the London conurbation) who claimed to have retained the accent of the region that they originally had come from, (2) speakers who stated that they had lost their regional accent and acquired an HC accent, and (3) native HC speakers. They read two texts in a normal listening environment. Listeners rated the similarity in accent between each of these texts and all the other texts. The results showed that in the normal listening conditions, the speakers who had lost their accent were rated as being more similar to HC English speakers than to those speakers from the same region who had retained their accent. In Experiment 2, recordings of the same speakers under frequency-shifted and delayed auditory feedback, as well as the normal listening conditions used earlier, were rated in order to see whether the manipulations of listening environment would elicit the speaker's original accent. Listeners rated similarity of accent in a sample of speech recorded under normal listening against a sample read by another speaker in one of the altered listening conditions. When listening condition was altered, the speakers who had lost their original accent were rated as more similar to those who had retained their accent. It is concluded that accent differences can be elicited by altering listening environment because the speech systems of speakers who have lost their accent are more vulnerable than those of speakers who have not changed their original accent.
这项研究关注的是早年习得的口音形式可能发生变化的处理或表征层面，以及改变说话者的听觉环境是否能引发其原始口音。在实验1中，对数量相等的三组人进行了录音：（1）居住在英国本土郡（HC）（伦敦市区周边）且声称保留了他们原本来自地区口音的人；（2）表示自己已经失去地区口音并习得HC口音的人；（3）HC地区的本地人。他们在正常的听力环境下朗读两篇文章。听众对每篇文章与所有其他文章之间的口音相似度进行评分。结果显示，在正常听力条件下，失去口音的人被认为与HC地区说英语的人比与来自同一地区保留口音的人更相似。在实验2中，对相同的说话者在频率偏移和延迟听觉反馈条件下以及早期使用的正常听力条件下的录音进行评分，以查看听力环境的改变是否会引发说话者的原始口音。听众对在正常听力条件下录制的一段语音样本与在一种改变后的听力条件下由另一位说话者朗读的样本之间的口音相似度进行评分。当听力条件改变时，失去原始口音的人被认为与保留口音的人更相似。研究得出结论，改变听力环境可以引发口音差异，因为失去口音的说话者的语音系统比未改变原始口音的说话者的语音系统更易受影响。
