Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, Indiana University, 200 South Jordan Avenue, Bloomington, Indiana 47405, USA.
J Acoust Soc Am. 2013 Mar;133(3):1677-86. doi: 10.1121/1.4776212.
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.
在口语识别和记忆任务中，来自多个来源的刺激变异性会影响表现。在当前的研究中，我们在两个实验中评估了外国口音变化对口语识别的影响。实验 1 使用了被试间设计，在单说话人和两个多说话人条件下（同口音的多个说话人和不同口音的多个说话人）测试噪声中的单词识别。在单说话人条件下，识别性能最高，但单口音和多口音条件之间没有差异。实验 2 进一步使用混合设计，在单口音和多口音条件下探索了多个说话人对单词的识别。与单口音条件相比，多口音条件下的单词识别受到损害，但在测试的语言背景下，这种影响有所不同。这些结果表明，外国口音变化的处理可能会以类似于其他变异性源（例如说话速度或风格）的方式影响单词识别，因为包含多个外国口音可能会导致除多说话人效应之外的轻微但显著的性能下降。
