Modeling the cognitive challenge of accented speech

在一个全球化的世界里，口音一直是清晰沟通的障碍。当然，每个人都有口音，但并不是所有的口音都一样，即使我们说的是同一种语言。例如，圣路易斯的“英语”与新加坡或格拉斯哥的“英语”是不一样的。我们对如何根据对方的口音调整自己的感知以及需要付出什么样的努力知之甚少。为了了解这种交流是如何工作的，这个项目调查了为什么有些人比其他人更难理解，以及听众如何适应不熟悉的口音。该研究团队将与圣路易斯科学中心，当地大学和其他社区团体合作，帮助其他人了解口音和语言多样性的丰富世界。通过实验和教育推广，该项目的最终目标是促进不同背景的说话者和听众之间的宽容和更好的沟通。关于口音感知的研究通常依赖于测量听众能正确识别多少单词。然而，有些听众可能要比其他人更努力地去理解一个有口音的人。它们可能达到相同的结果，但所涉及的处理可能非常不同。该项目将口音研究的重点转移到听力过程中认知处理的测量上，采用了听力努力文献和行为经济学领域的实验方法。为了确定最有助于听力努力的口音语音的特征，该提案还将语音的声学语音分析与实验结果联系起来。最后，本研究使用眼动追踪来验证听者放松语言类别以处理不熟悉口音的假设。 该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

In a globalized world, accents are a persistent hindrance to clear communication. Everyone has an accent, of course, but not all accents are alike, even when we speak the same language. “English” in St. Louis, for example, is not the same as “English” in Singapore or Glasgow. Relatively little is known about how we adjust our perceptions to each other's accents or what kind of effort that requires. In order to understand how such communication works, this project investigates why some speakers are more difficult to understand than others and how listeners adjust to unfamiliar accents. The research team will partner with the St. Louis Science Center, the local university, and other community groups to help others learn about accents and the rich world of linguistic diversity. Through its experiments and its educational outreach, the project ultimately aims to promote tolerance and better communication among speakers and listeners of all different backgrounds.Research on accent perception has typically relied on measuring how many words a listener can correctly identify. However, some listeners may have to work much harder than others to understand an accented speaker. They may achieve the same outcome, but the processing involved may be very different. This project shifts the focus of accent research to the measurement of cognitive processing during listening, employing a combination of experimental methods from the listening effort literature and the field of behavioral economics. To identify the features of accented speech that most contribute to listening effort, the proposal also relates acoustic-phonetic analyses of the speech to experimental outcomes. Finally, it uses eye-tracking to test the hypothesis that listeners relax their linguistic categories to process unfamiliar accents. This also has important scientific implications for automatic speech recognition, language teaching and language proficiency assessment.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.