Self-comprehension as a window on perception-production relationships

自我理解是感知与生产关系的窗口

• 批准号: 2048381
• 负责人: Sarah Creel
• 金额: $ 40.37万
• 依托单位: University of California-San Diego
• 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: 2021-09-15 至 2024-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2048381&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Self; comprehension; window; perception; production

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.

想象一下，为一家在世界各地都有分支机构的美国大公司工作。您正在与来自多个国家/地区、母语不同的发言者进行电话会议。即使每个人都说同一种语言，误解也经常发生。鉴于通用语言往往不是所有说话者的母语，不同的口音可能会导致沟通问题。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的声音非常相似，但难以发出像母语人士那样的语音(即，他们的语音是“带口音的”)，这可能是由于根深蒂固的运动习惯和/或产生声音的经验较少。但另一种可能性是，非母语人士发出的声音与大多数母语人士不同，因为他们实际上听到的声音不同。这一研究项目试图了解特定说话者对语音的感知(如“ship”与“Shape”中的元音)是如何与该说话者的发音相关的。对于说第二语言的人来说，这是一个特别相关的问题，他们往往在感知和表达方面都有困难。它对母语听众也有影响，他们经常难以理解第二语言使用者、不太熟悉方言或不太熟悉口音的人的讲话。在具有不同语言背景和口音的共同语言使用者之间进行更好的交流，将有利于与国际学生、医疗保健环境和美国企业进入新市场的教学环境。这个项目使用一种新的研究范式来测试人们如何感知自己的言语的微妙方面。英语为第一(或唯一)语言的说话者和将英语作为第二语言学习的说话者将被记录下来，并命名一组图片。然后，每个参与者都会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)录制的“ship”，并且必须从以下四幅图片中选择想要的单词：ship、Shape、Log和Lock。如果感知是交流困难的一个来源，那么以英语为第二语言的人应该相对更好地理解自己的言语(更准确、更快地选择想要的词)，因为这将与他们的心理表征相匹配。如果他们因为运动困难而说得不准确，那么他们会发现自己的语言很难理解，而不是他们对母语的理解。事实上，这种模式也适用于以英语为母语的人，尽管水平较低，为言语感知和创作之间的表征之间的联系提供了更全面的见解。这一奖项反映了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。