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

懂两种方言就像懂两种语言吗？虽然研究表明，听者通常更容易理解说自己方言的人，但大量的听者终生接触到多种方言，使他们能够接受两种方言。这个合作项目探索了听不同方言的双方言和单方言成年人的行为反应(理解语音的速度和准确性)和神经生理反应(测量听到语音时的大脑活动)。该项目专门研究了语境如何影响两种方言的听者的行为，测试了这样的假设，即当这些听者不确定预期使用哪种方言时，他们会在灵活但效率较低的策略之间切换，而当预期使用给定方言时，这些听者会在专注、更有效的策略之间进行切换。该项目关注的是那些长期接触当地方言和主流美国英语的双方言听众。参与者在大学和社区环境中使用移动实验室(大脑巴士)进行测试，扩大了方言处理研究中使用的典型人群，并增加了对神经科学研究的参与。双方言是语言学中一个研究不足、理论化程度较低的概念。然而，长期接触方言变异对听者的认知表征和策略的影响，对于理解听者如何处理变异，以及涉及不同认知结构的双语和单语的概念是有意义的。通过将行为和神经生理测量相结合，并在语言感知中使用神经科学测量的最新进展的基础上，该项目提供了关于两种方言交流的认知和神经基础的基本见解。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一句重音)，并在不同程度上(强与弱与无方言期望)，检查语境影响的概括性，并更好地理解听众在方言之间划出的界限。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。

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.