Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, University of Delaware, USA(1).
Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, University of Delaware, USA(1).
Cognition. 2018 Dec;181:80-92. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2018.08.010. Epub 2018 Aug 24.
Utterances produced by foreign-accented speakers are often judged as less credible, more vague, and more difficult to understand compared to those produced by native speakers. Some theoretical accounts argue that listeners have different expectations about the speech of non-native speakers. Other accounts argue that non-native speech is processed differently to the extent that a foreign accent taxes intelligibility and introduces additional processing load. Here we test the role of expectations for the processing of native vs. non-native speech in written texts where accents cannot be directly perceived (and thus affect processing load). In Experiment 1, native comprehenders gave higher ratings to the meaning of under-informative sentences ("Some people have noses with two nostrils") when they believed that the sentences were produced by non-native compared to native speakers. This difference was larger the more likely individual participants were to interpret under-informative sentences pragmatically (as opposed to logically). In Experiment 2, the tendency to forgive sins of information omission was shown to depend on the presumed L2 proficiency of non-native speakers. Experiment 3 replicated and extended the major finding. Since intelligibility of the sentences was identical across types of speakers, these findings provide support for the role of expectations for non-native speech comprehension, as well as for broader models of language processing that argue for a role of speaker identity.
带有口音的说话者说出的话语往往被认为不如以本族语为母语的说话者那样可信、模糊和难以理解。一些理论认为，听众对非母语说话者的言语有不同的期望。另一些理论则认为，非母语言语的处理方式不同，以至于外国口音会影响可理解性并引入额外的处理负荷。在这里，我们在无法直接感知口音（因此不会影响处理负荷）的书面文本中测试了对母语和非母语言语处理的期望的作用。在实验 1 中，母语理解者在他们认为句子是由非母语说话者而不是母语说话者说出时，对信息不足的句子（“有些人的鼻子有两个鼻孔”）的意思给予了更高的评价。当个体参与者更倾向于从语用角度（而不是逻辑角度）解释信息不足的句子时，这种差异更大。在实验 2 中，人们表现出原谅信息遗漏错误的倾向取决于对非母语说话者第二语言水平的假定。实验 3 复制并扩展了主要发现。由于句子的可理解性在不同类型的说话者之间是相同的，因此这些发现支持了对非母语言语理解的期望的作用，以及支持了更广泛的语言处理模型，该模型认为说话者身份起着作用。
