Accent-independent adaptation to foreign accented speech

Melissa M. Baese-Berk*, Ann R. Bradlow, Beverly A. Wright

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

115 Scopus citations

Abstract

Foreign-accented speech can be difficult to understand but listeners can adapt to novel talkers and accents with appropriate experience. Previous studies have demonstrated talker-independent but accent-dependent learning after training on multiple talkers from a single language background. Here, listeners instead were exposed to talkers from five language backgrounds during training. After training, listeners generalized their learning to novel talkers from language backgrounds both included and not included in the training set. These findings suggest that generalization of foreign-accent adaptation is the result of exposure to systematic variability in accented speech that is similar across talkers from multiple language backgrounds.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)EL174-EL180
Journaljournal of the Acoustical Society of America
Volume133
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - Mar 2013

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)
  • Acoustics and Ultrasonics

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