Self-comprehension as a window on perception-production relationships

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、使用不同母语的发言者进行电话会议。虽然大家都说着同一种语言，但误解还是经常发生。由于共同语言往往不是所有人的母语，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者非常相似，但却很难像母语者那样发出语音（即，他们的讲话是“有口音的”），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，非母语者发出的某些声音与大多数母语者不同，因为他们实际上听到的声音不同。这个研究项目旨在了解一个特定的说话者对语音的感知（例如“船”与“形状”中的元音）如何与说话者的声音产生相关。这对于第二语言使用者来说是一个特别相关的问题，他们通常在感知和表达方面都有困难。它也对母语听众产生了影响，他们通常很难理解第二语言使用者或不太熟悉方言或不太熟悉口音的人的讲话。拥有不同语言背景和口音的共同语言使用者之间更好的沟通将有利于国际学生的教学环境，医疗保健环境以及美国企业向新市场的扩展。这个项目使用了一种新颖的研究范式来测试人们如何感知自己的语言的微妙方面。英语是他们的第一（或唯一）语言的发言者和英语作为第二语言学习的发言者将被记录命名一组图片。然后，每个参与者将听到他们自己或其他人的录音，他们需要识别。例如，他们可能会听到自己（或其他人）的“船”录音，必须从四个图片中选择一个想要的单词：船，形状，日志和锁。如果感知是沟通困难的一个来源，那么英语作为第二语言的人应该比其他人更好地理解自己的语言（更准确，更快地选择想要的单词），因为它会匹配他们的心理表征。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与他们对母语的理解相比很难理解。事实上，这种模式也可能适用于母语人士，虽然在一个较低的水平，提供更普遍的见解之间的联系表示为语音感知和production.This奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得通过评估使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准的支持。

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.