Dorsi Josh, Dias James W, Zadoorian Serena, Rosenblum Lawrence D
Department of Neurology, Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, Penn State College of Medicine, 30 Long Lane, Hershey, PA, 17033, USA.
Department of Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC, USA.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2025 Apr;87(3):1010-1021. doi: 10.3758/s13414-025-03041-6. Epub 2025 Mar 11.
Phonetic convergence describes when a listener's speech becomes subtly more like the speech of a talker they hear. There are many possible reasons why phonetic convergence occurs. Here, we test whether phonetic convergence can facilitate speech perception. A group of adult native-English speaking participants (n = 9) were asked to identify words-in-noise generated from a group of talkers who either: (a) shadowed the speech of the participant (said out loud words they heard - Associated Shadowers) or (b) shadowed the speech of a different participant (Unassociated Shadowers). A separate group of raters (n = 45) performed an AXB similarity-matching task to confirm that Associated Shadowers sounded more like the participant they had shadowed than Unassociated Shadowers. We found that participants more accurately identified the speech of their Associated Shadowers and their accuracy for identifying the speech of their Associated Shadowers was positively related to the rated similarity of their speech. The results support theoretical accounts suggesting that phonetic convergence may facilitate speech understanding between individuals.
语音趋同描述的是，当听者的语音变得稍微更像他们所听到的说话者的语音时的情况。语音趋同出现的原因有很多。在此，我们测试语音趋同是否有助于言语感知。一组以英语为母语的成年参与者（n = 9）被要求识别由一组说话者生成的噪声中的单词，这些说话者要么：（a）跟读参与者的语音（大声说出他们听到的单词——关联跟读者），要么（b）跟读另一名参与者的语音（非关联跟读者）。另一组评分者（n = 45）执行AXB相似性匹配任务，以确认关联跟读者比非关联跟读者听起来更像他们所跟读的参与者。我们发现，参与者能更准确地识别其关联跟读者的语音，并且他们识别关联跟读者语音的准确性与对其语音的评分相似度呈正相关。这些结果支持了理论观点，即语音趋同可能有助于个体之间的言语理解。
