Collaborative Research: How Accent Distance Impacts Word Recognition Across the Lifespan

一个日益全球化的社会汇集了许多不同的地区或非母语口音的发言者。这些发音差异可能对成功的沟通构成挑战，特别是对语言和认知仍在发展中的儿童。事实上，对说话者使用不熟悉的方言和口音所产生的言语的成熟感知直到青春期后期才发展起来。了解这些发音差异如何以及何时导致沟通中断对于促进来自不同文化，语言和年龄组的人之间的沟通至关重要。这个项目将导致更好地了解特定的口音属性和听力情况如何有助于儿童和成人的跨方言和非母语口音交流的能力。这个项目预计将显着增加了解如何区域方言和非本地口音的变化影响儿童和成人的单词识别的特点内的音段，超音段，和感知域的口音距离。建立可靠和预测性的发音距离测量方法是将工作重点放在成人和儿童对特定音素对比的感知以及对不同方言和口音的自然产生的句子的感知上的关键。本计画将建立一个定量的口音变异发音距离指标。将测量各种各样的地区方言和非本地口音与家乡方言（米德兰美式英语）的音段、超音段和感知距离。这些指标的预测值将被评估为儿童和成人在安静和噪音中的单词识别准确性。该研究为在生命周期的关键点上对不熟悉口音的可测试单词识别模型提供了基础知识。研究产生的社会效益包括从代表性不足的群体中招募和保留妇女和个人从事研究工作，通过社区参与和外联活动向公众提供科学教育，以及分享研究产品，包括录音，数据集，该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响进行评估来支持审查标准。

An increasingly globalized society brings together speakers with many different regional or nonnative accents. These pronunciation differences can pose challenges for successful communication, particularly in children, whose language and cognition are still developing. Indeed, mature perception of speech produced by talkers with unfamiliar dialects and accents does not develop until late adolescence. Understanding how and when these pronunciation differences lead to breakdowns in communication is essential for facilitating communication across people from different cultures, languages, and age groups. This project will result in a better understanding of how specific accent properties and listening situations contribute to children's and adults' ability to communicate across dialects and nonnative accents. This project is expected to markedly increase the understanding of how regional dialect and nonnative accent variation impact children's and adult's word identification by characterizing accent distance within the segmental, suprasegmental, and perceptual domains. Establishing reliable and predictive measures of pronunciation distance is a key to bridging work focusing on adults' and children's perception of specific phoneme contrasts and perception of naturally produced sentences of different dialects and accents. This project will establish a quantitative pronunciation distance metric of accent variation. Segmental, suprasegmental, and perceptual distance from the home dialect (Midland American English) for a wide variety of regional dialects and nonnative accents will be measured. The predictive value of the metrics will be assessed for children's and adults' word recognition accuracy in quiet and in noise. The research provides foundational knowledge for a testable word recognition model of unfamiliar accents at key points across the lifespan. Societal benefits resulting from the research include the recruitment and retention of women and individuals from underrepresented groups into research careers, provision of science education to the general public through community engagement and outreach activities, and the sharing of research products including audio recordings, datasets, and experimental code.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.