Variability in Language Processing: Adapting to Non-Native Speakers

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Countries host many workers who are non-native speakers of the local language. Students from diverse international backgrounds attend class in a non-native tongue. Business people commonly use a foreign language as they travel around the globe, expanding their markets and collaborations. The goal of this research is to investigate how people understand non-native speakers and to examine the implications for communication between native and non-native speakers. The investigators will test whether people use different strategies when trying to understand a non-native speaker than a native speaker. For example, when people understand non-native speakers they pay less attention to what is actually said, and more attention to the situation surrounding the communication. This has implications for how well people remember what is said, how likely they are to reach an agreement, and how they perceive the speaker's motives and intentions.This research project will focus on the psychological mechanisms that people naturally use when they communicate. It could lead to discoveries in a wide variety of domains with important interpersonal and societal implications. For instance, in education it could help account for difficulties faced by non-native English speakers in school, or difficulties that non-native teachers encounter; in the legal domain it may provide insight into how the testimony of non-native witnesses is understood and misunderstood; in the medical domain it should have implications for effective communication between physicians and patients, or among physicians, when one of them is a non-native speaker of the language. In general, insight into how people understand each other could provide critical contributions to society by improving communication and reducing conflict between speakers with different native tongues.This work is co-funded by SBE/BCS and the Office of International Science and Engineering