Modeling the cognitive challenge of accented speech

在全球化的世界里，口音一直是沟通的障碍。当然，每个人都有口音，但并不是所有的口音都是一样的，即使我们说同样的语言。例如，圣路易斯的“English”与新加坡或格拉斯哥的“English”不同。对于我们如何根据彼此的口音调整我们的感知，或者这需要付出什么样的努力，我们知之甚少。为了了解这种交流是如何进行的，这个项目调查了为什么一些说话者比其他人更难理解，以及听者如何适应不熟悉的口音。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丰富的语言多样性世界。通过其实验和教育推广，该项目最终旨在促进所有不同背景的说话者和听者之间的宽容和更好的沟通。口音感知的研究通常依赖于测量听者能够正确识别多少单词。然而，有些听众可能要比其他人更努力才能听懂带口音的说话人。他们可能会得到相同的结果，但涉及的过程可能会非常不同。该项目将重音研究的重点转移到听力过程中认知加工的测量上，采用了听力努力文献和行为经济学领域的实验方法相结合的方法。为了确定对听力影响最大的带口音的语音特征，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，它使用眼球跟踪来检验这一假设，即听者放松了他们的语言类别，以处理不熟悉的口音。这也对自动语音识别、语言教学和语言水平评估具有重要的科学意义。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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.