Doctoral dissertation research: Exploring individual differences in prime-based intraspeaker variation and perceptual adaptation

一个人的发音和语音处理不是恒定的，会随着语境因素而变化，比如他们在和谁说话/听谁说话/听谁说话/听谁说话，话题是什么，甚至是基于联想启动的方言期望的微妙变化。这些环境因素是否以及如何影响不同的人，以及它们是否以同样的方式影响语言产生和感知过程，这些问题尚未确定。在本研究中，Abigail Walker女士将探讨身份、语言经验和语言威望如何制约会话话题和联想启动对语言加工的影响。这项研究的重点是美国和英国侨民的行为，以及美国和英国的英超联赛（EPL）和美式足球的球迷，并衡量标准美式英语（SAE）和标准英式英语（SBE）之间的变化/适应。Walker使用实验技术（命名任务和噪声条件下的句子可理解性）结合丰富的访谈数据来观察SAE和SBE的不同联想启动如何影响与启动有不同身份关系的人，以及不同程度地暴露于启动方言。这一结果将有助于我们更准确地预测何时会看到说话人发生变化，并可能促使人们将身份识别纳入语音处理的认知模型。至关重要的是，通过比较说话者的生产和感知转变，沃克女士可以比较身份是否以类似的方式影响生产和感知（即，与主要的积极身份关系是否会导致生产转变和对该方言的感知适应？），这对生产-感知界面有影响。资助这项提案将加强对有前途的研究生的培养。

An individual person's pronunciation and speech processing are not constant, changing with contextual factors like who they are (or think they are) talking/listening to, what the topic is, and even subtle shifts in dialect expectations based on associative priming. What is not established is whether and how these contextual factors affect different people, and whether they affect speech production and perception processes in the same way.In this study, Ms. Abigail Walker will investigate how identity, linguistic experience and linguistic prestige constrain the effects of topic of conversation and associative priming on linguistic processing. The study focuses on the behavior of American and English expatriates, and fans of English Premier League (EPL) soccer and American football in the U.S. and the U.K., and measures shifts/ adaptations between Standard American English (SAE) and Standard British English (SBE). Walker uses experimental techniques (a naming task and sentence intelligibility in noise) combined with rich interview data to see how different associative primes of SAE and SBE affect people with different identity relations to the primes, and different levels of exposure to the primed dialects.The results will critically lead to tighter predictions on when we expect to see intraspeaker shifting, and could prompt the serious incorporation of identity into cognitive models of speech processing. Critically, by comparing production and perception shifts within speakers, Ms. Walker can compare whether identity affects production and perception in similar ways (i.e., do positive identity relations to a prime result in both production shifts and perceptual adaptations to that dialect?), which has implications for the production-perception interface. Funding this proposal will enhance the training of a promising graduate student.