Collaborative research: Listening out for variation: An investigation of mono- and bidialectal listeners in the U.S.

合作研究：倾听变化：对美国单方言和双方言听众的调查

• 批准号: 2041081
• 负责人: Janet van Hell
• 金额: $ 32.85万
• 依托单位: Pennsylvania State Univ University Park
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-06-15 至 2024-11-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2041081&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; research; Listening; out; variation

Is knowing two dialects like knowing two languages? While research has shown that listeners typically find it easier to understand speakers of their own dialect, a large number of listeners have lifelong exposure to multiple dialects, making them receptively bidialectal. This collaborative project explores the behavioral responses (speed and accuracy in understanding speech) and neurophysiological responses (measuring brain activity when hearing speech) of bidialectal and monodialectal adults listening to different dialects. The project specifically studies how context impacts what bidialectal listeners do, testing the hypothesis that these listeners switch between a flexible, but less efficient strategy when they are unsure which dialect to expect, and a focused, more efficient strategy when a given dialect is expected. The project focuses on receptively bidialectal listeners who have long-term exposure to their local dialect as well as Mainstream US English. Participants are tested in both university and community settings using a mobile laboratory (the Brain Bus), expanding on the typical populations used in dialect processing research and increasing participation in neuroscience research. Bidialectalism is a under-researched and under-theorized concept in linguistics. However, the effect that long-term exposure to dialectal variability has on listeners’ cognitive representations and strategies has implications for understanding how listeners process variation in general, and for conceptions of bilingualism and monolingualism as involving different cognitive architectures. By combining behavioral and neurophysiological measures, and building on recent developments in using neuroscience measures in speech perception, the project provides foundational insights on the cognitive and neural bases of bidialectal communication. The project manipulates dialect expectations in two different ways (using visual cues to talker-identity in one experiment, and preceding sentence accent in another), and to different degrees (strong vs. weak vs. no dialect expectations), to examine how generalizable context effects are, and to better understand where listeners draw boundaries between dialects.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.

懂两种方言就像懂两种语言吗？虽然研究表明，听众通常更容易理解说自己方言的人，但很多听众一生都在接触多种方言，这使他们能够接受双方言。这个合作项目探讨了双方言和单方言成年人在听不同方言时的行为反应（理解言语的速度和准确性）和神经生理反应（听言语时测量大脑活动）。该项目专门研究了语境如何影响双方言听者的行为，测试了这样一种假设：当听者不确定该期待哪种方言时，他们会采取灵活但效率较低的策略，而当他们期待一种给定的方言时，他们会采取专注的、更有效的策略。该项目主要针对那些长期接触当地方言和美国主流英语的双方言接受者。参与者在大学和社区环境中使用移动实验室（大脑总线）进行测试，扩大了方言处理研究中使用的典型人群，并增加了神经科学研究的参与。在语言学中，双方言是一个研究不足、理论化程度较低的概念。然而，长期接触方言变化对听者认知表征和策略的影响，对于理解听者如何处理一般变化，以及双语和单语的概念涉及不同的认知结构，具有重要意义。通过结合行为和神经生理学的测量方法，以及在语言感知中使用神经科学测量方法的最新进展，该项目为双方言交流的认知和神经基础提供了基本的见解。该项目以两种不同的方式操纵方言期望（在一个实验中使用视觉线索来识别说话者，在另一个实验中使用前句重音），并在不同程度上（强、弱、无方言期望），以检验语境效应的可概括性，并更好地理解听众在方言之间的界限。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。