Collaborative research: Listening out for variation: An investigation of mono- and bidialectal listeners in the U.S.

懂两种方言就像懂两种语言吗？虽然研究表明，听众通常会发现更容易理解自己方言的说话者，但大量听众一生都接触多种方言，使他们能够接受双方言。这个合作项目探讨了听不同方言的双方言和单方言成年人的行为反应（理解语音的速度和准确性）和神经生理反应（测量听到语音时的大脑活动）。该项目专门研究了语境如何影响双方言听众的行为，测试了这些听众在不确定期待哪种方言时灵活但效率较低的策略和预期给定方言时集中，更有效的策略之间切换的假设。该项目的重点是那些长期接触当地方言和主流美国英语的接受性双方言的听众。参与者在大学和社区环境中使用移动的实验室（大脑总线）进行测试，扩大了方言处理研究中使用的典型人群，并增加了对神经科学研究的参与。双方言现象是语言学中一个研究较少、理论化程度较低的概念。然而，长期暴露于方言的变化对听众的认知表征和策略的影响，了解听众如何处理一般的变化，以及双语和单语的概念，涉及不同的认知架构。通过结合行为和神经生理学的措施，并建立在最近的发展，在使用神经科学措施的语音感知，该项目提供了基本的见解的认知和神经基础的双方言沟通。该项目以两种不同的方式操纵方言期望（在一个实验中使用视觉线索来识别说话者，在另一个实验中使用前句口音），并且在不同程度上（强vs.弱vs.无方言期望），以检查上下文效应的可推广性，并更好地了解听众在哪里划分方言之间的界限。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得支持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。

Is knowing two dialects like knowing two languages? While research has shown that listeners typically find it easier to understand speakers of their own dialect, a large number of listeners have lifelong exposure to multiple dialects, making them receptively bidialectal. This collaborative project explores the behavioral responses (speed and accuracy in understanding speech) and neurophysiological responses (measuring brain activity when hearing speech) of bidialectal and monodialectal adults listening to different dialects. The project specifically studies how context impacts what bidialectal listeners do, testing the hypothesis that these listeners switch between a flexible, but less efficient strategy when they are unsure which dialect to expect, and a focused, more efficient strategy when a given dialect is expected. The project focuses on receptively bidialectal listeners who have long-term exposure to their local dialect as well as Mainstream US English. Participants are tested in both university and community settings using a mobile laboratory (the Brain Bus), expanding on the typical populations used in dialect processing research and increasing participation in neuroscience research. Bidialectalism is a under-researched and under-theorized concept in linguistics. However, the effect that long-term exposure to dialectal variability has on listeners’ cognitive representations and strategies has implications for understanding how listeners process variation in general, and for conceptions of bilingualism and monolingualism as involving different cognitive architectures. By combining behavioral and neurophysiological measures, and building on recent developments in using neuroscience measures in speech perception, the project provides foundational insights on the cognitive and neural bases of bidialectal communication. The project manipulates dialect expectations in two different ways (using visual cues to talker-identity in one experiment, and preceding sentence accent in another), and to different degrees (strong vs. weak vs. no dialect expectations), to examine how generalizable context effects are, and to better understand where listeners draw boundaries between dialects.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.