SBP: How does improved speech perception impact higher-level processing?

当人们听别人说话时，他们会经历许多不同的声音和口音。虽然不熟悉的说话者和那些有不熟悉口音的人通常不太容易被听者理解，但随着听者对说话者变得更加熟悉，可理解性也会提高。在这项建议中，研究人员检查是否对说话者的意图信息的理解或理解有类似的影响。也就是说，即使在清晰度没有受到影响的情况下，对说话者或特定的外国口音缺乏熟悉度是否会对理解或记忆产生负面影响？例如，在教室里听一位不熟悉的老师(例如代课老师)是否会使理解和记住课程内容变得更加困难？我们的社会包括有许多不同口音的人，既有美国地区的，也有国际的。如果一个人的口音干扰了听者对对话的理解或记忆，即使所有的词都被准确地理解了，这可能会影响这个人的感知方式。例如，如果当谈话者熟悉口音时，对对话的理解和记忆得到加强，这可能会使目前在教育和职业机会方面的偏见永久化。在求职面试中，口音不熟悉的人会被认为比面试官口音的人更不容易理解，因此也就不那么合格。在目前的项目中，研究人员将研究熟悉说话者的声音或特定的外国口音在多大程度上改善记忆力。这将通过以下方法来实现：首先让听者熟悉特定的说话者或外国口音，然后测试这些人说的单词和短语是否比陌生人或带不熟悉外国口音的说话者说的单词和短语记住得更好。此外，他们还将考察熟悉度在多大程度上提高了听者对较长课程中新信息的记忆力。结果应该允许开发一个框架，以了解具有挑战性的听力情况如何影响记忆和理解，以及如何通过听觉训练范例来改善效果。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

When people listen to other talkers, they experience many different voices and accents. Although unfamiliar talkers and those with unfamiliar accents are often less intelligible to a listener, intelligibility improves as the listener becomes more familiar with the talker. In this proposal, the investigators examine whether there is a similar impact on the comprehension or understanding of a talker’s intended message. That is, does lack of familiarity with a talker or with a specific foreign accent negatively impact comprehension or memory, even when intelligibility is unimpaired? For example, does listening to an unfamiliar teacher in a classroom (e.g., a substitute teacher) make it harder to understand and remember the content of the lesson? Our society includes people with many different accents, both regional US and international. If a person’s accent interferes with a listener’s comprehension or memory for a conversation, even if all the words are accurately perceived, this could influence how the person is perceived. For example, if comprehension and memory for the conversation is enhanced when the talker’s accent is familiar, it could perpetuate current biases in educational and occupational opportunities. In a job interview, people with unfamiliar accents would be judged as less understandable and hence less qualified than those with the interviewer’s accent. In the current project, the investigators will examine the extent to which familiarity with a talker’s voice or a specific foreign accent improves memory. This will be accomplished by first familiarizing listeners with a specific talker or foreign accent and then testing whether words and phrases said by those people are remembered better than words and phrases said by unfamiliar people or by talkers with an unfamiliar foreign accent. In addition, they will examine the extent to which familiarity improves listeners’ memory for new information presented in a longer lecture. The results should allow development of a framework for understanding how challenging listening situations impact memory and comprehension and how to ameliorate the effects through auditory training paradigms.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.