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15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS-15)Barcelona, Spain |
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This study investigated talker-independent perceptual learning of a
foreign accent by exposing native English listeners to Chinese-accented
English and then testing their perception of English produced by a
novel Chinese-accented talker. Training conditions involved exposure
to either a single or multiple Chinese-accented talkers. Control conditions
involved either no training or task training with native English talkers.
A talker-specific training condition in which the training talker
was the same as the Chinese-accented test talker was also included.
Results showed better performance on the post-training test with the
Chinese-accented talker after both the single and multiple talker training
conditions relative to the no-training control. However, test performance
following single talker training was equivalent to post-test performance
following the task training condition (training with native English
talkers), demonstrating a strong task familiarity effect. Performance
following the multiple talker training was significantly better than
following either the single talker or the task training conditions,
and was equivalent to performance following the talker-specific training.
These findings suggest that, with exposure to sufficient variability,
listeners can develop highly generalized cognitive representations
of Chinese-accented speech.
Bibliographic reference. Bradlow, Ann R. / Bent, Tessa (2003): "Listener adaptation to foreign-accented English", In ICPhS-15, 2881-2884.