Nathan L, Wells B, Donlan C
Department of Human Communication Science, University College London.
J Child Lang. 1998 Jun;25(2):343-65. doi: 10.1017/s0305000998003444.
The effect of regional accent on children's processing of speech is a theoretically and practically important aspect of phonological development that has been little researched. 48 children from London, aged four and seven years old, were tested on their ability to repeat and define single words presented in their own accent and in a Glaswegian accent. Results showed that word comprehension was significantly reduced in the Glaswegian condition and that four-year-olds performed less successfully than seven-year-olds. Both groups made similar numbers of lexical misidentifications, but the younger children were more likely to fail to access any word at all. On the repetition task, the younger children showed a different pattern of errors to the older children, their productions being apparently more influenced by the phonetics of the Glaswegian stimuli. It is suggested that such phonetic responses are related to the younger children's failure to map the unfamiliar accent onto their own phonological representations. It is proposed that the lexical misidentifications, common to both age groups, are more likely to be induced by lack of context. The paper concludes with discussion of implications of these findings for our understanding of how children develop the ability to process unfamiliar regional accents.
地区口音对儿童言语加工的影响是语音发展中一个在理论和实践上都很重要的方面，但此前很少有人对此进行研究。来自伦敦的48名4岁和7岁儿童接受了测试，以考察他们重复和定义用自己的口音以及格拉斯哥口音呈现的单个单词的能力。结果表明，在格拉斯哥口音条件下，单词理解能力显著下降，且4岁儿童的表现不如7岁儿童成功。两组出现的词汇错误识别数量相似，但年幼的儿童更有可能根本无法识别任何单词。在重复任务中，年幼的儿童与年长的儿童表现出不同的错误模式，他们的发音明显更受格拉斯哥口音刺激语音的影响。研究表明，这种语音反应与年幼的儿童无法将不熟悉的口音映射到自己的语音表征有关。研究提出，两个年龄组都出现的词汇错误识别更有可能是由缺乏语境导致的。本文最后讨论了这些发现对于我们理解儿童如何发展处理不熟悉地区口音能力的启示。
