Self-comprehension as a window on perception-production relationships

想象一下，为一家在世界各地设有分支机构的美国大公司工作。您正在与来自多个国家的不同母语的发言者进行电话会议。即使大家说的是同一种语言，误解也经常发生。考虑到通用语言通常不是所有使用者的母语，不同的口音可能会导致交流问题。许多人认为这些误解的发生是因为说话者听到的声音与母语人士非常相似，但很难发出像母语人士那样的声音（即，他们的讲话有“口音”），这可能是由于根深蒂固的运动习惯和/或缺乏发出声音的经验。但另一种可能性是，非母语人士发出的一些声音与大多数母语人士不同，因为他们实际上听到的这些声音不同。该研究项目旨在了解特定说话者对语音的感知（例如“ship”和“shape”中的元音）与说话者发出的声音之间的关系。对于说第二语言的人来说，这是一个特别相关的问题，他们通常在感知和表达方面都有困难。这对母语者也有影响，他们通常很难理解第二语言使用者、方言不太熟悉的人或口音不太熟悉的人说的话。不同语言背景和口音的同一种语言使用者之间更好的交流将有利于国际学生的教学环境、医疗保健环境以及美国企业向新市场的扩展。这个项目使用一种新颖的研究范式来测试人们如何感知自己的语言的微妙方面。以英语为第一（或唯一）语言的讲话者和以英语为第二语言的讲话者将被记录一组图片的命名。然后，每个参与者将听到自己或其他人的录音，他们需要识别这些录音。例如，他们可能会听到自己（或别人）对“船”的录音，并必须从四张图片中选择想要的单词：船、形状、原木和锁。如果感知是沟通困难的一个来源，那么以英语为第二语言的人应该相对更好地理解自己的讲话（更准确，更快地选择预期的单词），而不是别人的讲话，因为这将符合他们的心理表征。如果他们因为运动困难而说得不准确，那么他们会发现与他们对母语的理解相比，他们自己的语言很难理解。事实上，这种模式可能也适用于母语人士，尽管是在较低的水平上，这为语言感知和产生的表征之间的联系提供了更普遍的见解。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。

Imagine working for a major American company with branches around the world. You are on a conference call with speakers from multiple countries with different native languages. Even though everyone is speaking the same language, misunderstandings often happen. Given that the common language is often not the native language for all speakers, the different accents may lead to communication issues. Many people assume that these misunderstandings happen because speakers hear sounds quite similarly to native speakers but have difficulty producing the speech sounds like a native speaker (i.e., their speech is “accented”), perhaps due to ingrained motor habits and/or less experience producing the sounds. But another possibility is that nonnative speakers produce some sounds differently from most native speakers because they actually hear those sounds differently. This research project seeks to understand how a particular speaker’s perception of speech sounds (such as the vowel sound in “ship” vs. “shape”) is related to that speaker’s production of the sounds. This is a particularly relevant question for second-language speakers, who often have difficulties with both perception and production. It also has ramifications for native listeners, who often have difficulties comprehending speech from second-language speakers or speakers of less-familiar dialects or with less-familiar accents. Better communication among speakers of a common language who have different language backgrounds and accents would benefit instructional contexts with international students, medical care settings, and extension of American businesses into new markets. This project uses a novel research paradigm to test subtle aspects of how people perceive their own speech. Speakers for whom English is their first (or only) language and speakers who learned English as a second language will be recorded naming a set of pictures. Each participant will then hear their own or someone else’s recording, which they will need to identify. For example, they may hear their own (or someone else’s) recording of “ship” and must select the intended word from one of four pictures: ship, shape, log, and lock. If perception is a source of communication difficulties, speakers of English as a second language should be relatively better at understanding their own speech (more accurate and faster at choosing the intended word) than the speech of others because it will match their mental representations. If they speak inaccurately because of motor difficulty, then they will find their own speech difficult to understand, compared with their understanding of native speech. Indeed, this pattern may also hold for native speakers, albeit at a reduced level, providing more general insights into the links between representations for speech perception and production.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.