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Rapid adaptation to foreign-accented English

Article in The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · January 2005

DOI: 10.1121/1.1815131 · Source: PubMed

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Rapid adaptation to foreign-accented Englisha)
Constance M. Clarkeb) and Merrill F. Garrett
Department of Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85721

共Received 13 January 2004; revised 9 September 2004; accepted 14 September 2004兲

This study explored the perceptual benefits of brief exposure to non-native speech. Native English
listeners were exposed to English sentences produced by non-native speakers. Perceptual processing
speed was tracked by measuring reaction times to visual probe words following each sentence.
Three experiments using Spanish- and Chinese-accented speech indicate that processing speed is
initially slower for accented speech than for native speech but that this deficit diminishes within one
minute of exposure. Control conditions rule out explanations for the adaptation effect based on
practice with the task and general strategies for dealing with difficult speech. Further results suggest
that adaptation can occur within as few as two to four sentence-length utterances. The findings
emphasize the flexibility of human speech processing and require models of spoken word
recognition that can rapidly accommodate significant acoustic-phonetic deviations from native
language speech patterns. © 2004 Acoustical Society of America. 关DOI: 10.1121/1.1815131兴
PACS numbers: 43.71.Bp, 43.71.Hw 关RLD兴 Pages: 3647–3658

I. INTRODUCTION vocal tract characteristics, normalization was thought to in-

Foreign accent is a source of variability in speech that
can be particularly detrimental to speech perception. Non-
native speech can cause misidentification of words 共Lane,
1963; Munro and Derwing, 1995a, b; van Wijngaarden,
2001兲 and increased processing time 共Munro and Derwing,
1995b兲. However, research shows that experience with ac-
cented speech improves perceptual accuracy 共Bradlow and
Bent, 2003; Clarke, 2000; Weil, 2001; Wingstedt and Schul-
man, 1987兲. What is not clear is how much 共or little兲 expe-
rience is necessary for changes in perception to occur. Do
significant changes require hours, minutes, or only seconds
of exposure? Our study addressed this question by recording
on-line changes in the ease of processing non-native speech
during the first few moments of exposure. A principal as-
sumption was that even a short sample of foreign-accented
speech contains phonological regularities that the listener’s
speech processing system could exploit. Knowledge of these
regularities should lead to more efficient decoding of the
speech signal, and therefore to improved processing effi-
ciency after exposure to only a few accented utterances.
Traditionally, variability in the acoustic realization of
words and phonemes has been viewed as noise and an im-
pediment to language perception. It was assumed that in the
initial stages of speech processing, a normalization mecha-
nism strips away ‘‘nonlinguistic’’ aspects of the signal 共such
as those due to vocal tract characteristics兲, revealing invari-
ant acoustic cues to phonetic identity 共Liberman et al., 1967;
Shankweiler et al., 1977兲. In compensating for differences in
a兲
This work contributed to the first author’s doctoral dissertation and was
conducted under the direction of the second author. Portions of this work
were presented in ‘‘Perceptual adjustment to foreign-accented English with
short term exposure,’’ in Proceedings of the 7th International Conference
on Spoken Language Processing, Denver, CO, 2002, edited by J. H. L.
Hansen and B. Pellom, pp. 253–256.
b兲
Present address: Department of Psychology, University at Buffalo, State
University of New York, Buffalo, NY 14260. Electronic-mail:
cclarke2@buffalo.edu
volve calibrating vowel perception according to the vowel
space dimensions of each speaker 共Joos, 1948兲. There is evi-
dence that vowel identification is indeed evaluated in a rela-
tive, rather than absolute, manner. Ladefoged and Broadbent
共1957兲 found that identification of vowels in a /bVt/ context
changed according to the frequency range of formants in a
carrier sentence. Another finding consistent with the normal-
ization hypothesis is the effect of constantly changing the
talker in a series of spoken words. This results in slower
processing and increased error rates, presumably due to the
need to recalibrate to each talker 共Mullennix et al., 1989;
Sommers et al., 1994兲.
However, recent findings indicate that many nonlinguis-
tic aspects of speech are not discarded, as the normalization
hypothesis implies, but are retained and affect later speech
processing 共for a review, see Pisoni, 1997兲. For example,
Palmeri et al. 共1993兲 reported faster recognition for previ-
ously presented words when the second presentation was in
the same voice rather than a new voice. This should not
occur if specific voice characteristics are discarded during
speech perception. Consequently, many researchers have ar-
gued that some forms of variability should be reconceptual-
ized as useful information rather than noise, and that speech
perception models must incorporate variability as a funda-
mental aspect of spoken word recognition 共Luce and McLen-
nan, in press; Nygaard and Pisoni, 1995; Pisoni, 1997兲.
Against this background, foreign accent presents a use-
ful kind of variability for experimentation. Non-native
speech contains multiple departures from native norms that
can cause perceptual difficulty. These include deviations
from native phoneme prototypes as well as non-native pho-
netic context rules, syllable structure, and prosodic patterns.
Foreign-accented speech thus requires adaptation to a range
of variability that supplements previous perception research
on variability due to vocal tract characteristics, phonetic con-
text, and speaking rate.

J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 116 (6), December 2004 0001-4966/2004/116(6)/3647/12/$20.00 © 2004 Acoustical Society of America 3647
 This is not to say that the types of phonetic variability
observed in accented speech do not occur in native speech.
We assume here that the variations of accented speech can be
considered an extreme form of that seen among native speak-
ers 共Nygaard and Pisoni, 1998兲. It might be supposed that
adapting to a new native voice involves accommodation of
new acoustic speech characteristics, such as voice quality,
while adapting to an accented voice requires accommodation
of new phonetic characteristics. However, it has been shown
that familiarity with a native voice is based not only on voice
quality but also on pronunciation idiosyncrasies, i.e., pho-
netic patterns 共Remez et al., 1997兲 typically due to dialect or
idiolect. Therefore, it is plausible that similar mechanisms
are at work in coping with differences among native speakers
and with differences between native and accented speakers.
The advantage in studying accented speech is that these pro-
cesses are exaggerated, whereas they typically occur too
quickly for observation with native speech.
Lane 共1963兲 seems to have been the first to establish that
word identification is poorer for accented than for native
speech. He found that word identification accuracy for
Serbian-, Japanese-, and Punjabi-accented English was ap-
proximately 36% lower than for native speech in all signal-
to-noise ratio and filtering conditions. More recent work has
shown lower intelligibility for a Mandarin accent in second
language 共L2兲 learners of English 共Munro and Derwing,
1995a, b兲, and an English accent in L2 learners of Dutch
共van Wijngaarden, 2001兲. van Wijngaarden estimated that the
reduction in intelligibility for the speech of fluent non-
natives was equivalent to lowering native speech by 3 to 4
decibels 共dB兲.
In addition to poorer word identification, accented
speech can slow perceptual processing. Schmid and Yeni-
Komshian 共1999兲 showed that mispronunciations were de-
tected more slowly for Spanish- and Tamil-accented speech.
And, in a speeded true/false sentence verification task, Mu-
nro and Derwing 共1995b兲 found that listeners were slower to
verify sentences produced by a Mandarin-accented speaker,
even when they transcribed them correctly.
However the perceptual system handles variability in
speech, some kind of learning must be involved. Normaliza-
tion as a way to compensate for talker-specific characteristics
must be supplemented or supplanted by mechanisms that re-
tain information about those characteristics and apply it to
later perceptual processing. Many studies have demonstrated
the perceptual benefits of experience with various speech
characteristics, including those due to talker differences
共Nygaard and Pisoni, 1998; Nygaard et al., 1994兲, speaking
rate 共Dupoux and Green, 1997兲, hearing impairment 共Mc-
Garr, 1983兲, and synthetic speech 共e.g., Greenspan et al.,
1988; for a review, see Duffy and Pisoni, 1992兲.
The last few years have seen an increased interest in the
perceptual learning of accented speech characteristics 共Brad-
low and Bent, 2003; Clarke, 2000; Weil, 2001兲. However, the
first experiments investigating this topic were in the 1980s.
Gass and Varonis 共1984兲 reported improved sentence tran-
scription accuracy following exposure to a story spoken by a
non-native speaker. Wingstedt and Schulman 共1987兲 created
a ‘‘fake’’ accent in Swedish speech and found higher word
3648 J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Vol. 116, No. 6, December 2004
repetition accuracy for participants who had earlier repeated
a set of accented sentences. Because this improvement was
attained with novel words, the researchers concluded that the
listeners had developed ‘‘phonological perceptual rules’’ 共p.
339兲—rules for translating the acoustic-phonetic input for a
particular accent to the native representations of the intended
phonemes.
Several recent studies have replicated the findings of
perceptual improvement following exposure to accented
speech. Clarke 共2000兲 trained native English listeners over
three sessions to recognize either several Spanish-accented
voices or several Chinese-accented voices. In a subsequent
word transcription test that included one of the Spanish-
accented voices and one of the Chinese-accented voices from
training, listeners were more accurate with the accented
voice they were trained with than the other accented voice.
In a similar study, Weil 共2001兲 exposed listeners to a
Marathi-accented voice using word and sentence transcrip-
tion tasks over four training sessions. In a following tran-
scription test, trained listeners were more accurate with the
Marathi-accented voice than were untrained listeners. Fi-
nally, Bradlow and Bent 共2003兲 also found a beneficial effect
of familiarity with a Chinese-accented voice in a sentence
transcription test after two days of transcription training.
In sum, there is clear evidence of perceptual learning for
a variety of nonlinguistic speech characteristics—aspects of
speech once thought of as noise to be discarded during lan-
guage processing. This information is retained and used in a
beneficial way. Furthermore, the benefits are integral to the
speech system: In various cases it has been shown that task
improvement did not rely on the use of semantic context
共McGarr, 1983兲, becoming accustomed to odd physical char-
acteristics of the speech 共Greenspan et al., 1988兲, or memo-
rizing alternative pronunciations for individual lexical items
共Nygaard et al., 1994; Wingstedt and Schulman, 1987兲.
Rather, the benefits seem to result from adjustments at a
relatively early level of processing, probably the phonologi-
cal level 共Duffy and Pisoni, 1992兲.
Existing studies demonstrate benefits of several hours
experience with accented speech. But an unanswered ques-
tion is when perceptual learning of accented speech begins.
Does the change in processing require prolonged experience,
or is the response more rapid? Knowledge of the timeline for
perceptual learning will constrain the possible mechanisms
underlying this learning. Previous research with talker-
specific characteristics 共Ladefoged and Broadbent, 1957兲 and
compressed speech 共Dupoux and Green, 1997兲 has shown
changes with exposure to as few as one and ten sentence-
length utterances, respectively. This indicates that some form
of adaptation occurs almost immediately. Moreover, subjec-
tive experience suggests that adaptation to accented speech
also occurs quickly. Many listeners report that when first
listening to a non-native speaker, comprehension can be dif-
ficult, but after a few moments of exposure they ‘‘catch on’’
to the non-native speech patterns, and comprehension im-
proves. These subjective reports might reflect an increased
reliance on utterance or situational context to interpret unin-
telligible words, or on rapid perceptual learning of phono-
logical patterns, or both. The focus of the research reported
C. M. Clarke and M. F. Garrett: Rapid adaptation to accent
here was the learning of phonological patterns specific to the
accented speaker. We attempted to rule out other sources of
improvement, such as the use of semantic context or general
increases in effort or attention. Thus, a finding of improved
processing efficiency would suggest adaptive flexibility
within the phonological processing system itself.
We used a cross-modal matching task with a reaction
time measure to track processing efficiency during the course
of exposure to accented voices. Sentence-length English ut-
terances were presented, each ending in a key word not pre-
dictable from the semantic context. Immediately following
each auditory sentence, a visual probe word appeared on a
computer screen. The task was a speeded yes/no response
indicating whether the probe word matched the final word of
the sentence. This task had three advantages. First, using
sentences rather than isolated words more closely matches
conversational language and allows for the influence of all
phonological aspects of accented speech, including interword
phonetic context effects and prosodic patterns. Second, reac-
tion time 共RT兲 may be a more sensitive measure of subtle
changes in processing efficiency during adaptation. RT has
already proven sensitive to the perceptual difficulty caused
by accented speech even when intelligibility is high 共Munro
and Derwing, 1995b兲. Third, processing speed is sampled at
the end of every sentence, approximately once every 2 s of
speech, providing a relatively fine-grained temporal resolu-
tion of the effects of perceptual learning.
II. EXPERIMENT 1
This experiment looked for changes in processing effi-
ciency arising from a short period of exposure to accented
speech 共under one minute兲. Three stimulus conditions were
tested: 16 sentences produced by a native speaker of Spanish
with a moderate accent 共accent condition兲; 12 sentences pro-
duced by a native speaker of English, followed by four sen-
tences produced by the Spanish-accented speaker 共control
condition兲; and 16 sentences produced by the native speaker
of English 共no accent condition兲.
It was predicted that the accent group would be slower
than the control and no accent groups at the beginning of
exposure, but as the experiment progressed the accent
groups’ RT would decrease due to adaptation. For the last
four sentences, the accent group was expected to be faster
than the control group because the control group would not
have had the previous 12 sentences to adapt to the accented
speech. This controlled for the possibility that the accent
group’s improvement was due solely to practice with the
task. Finally, the no accent condition provided a comparison
for the level of processing efficiency the accent group
reached by the fourth block 共i.e., to see whether they reached
native-speech processing efficiency兲.
A. Method
1. Participants
Forty-eight University of Arizona undergraduates 共37 fe-
males, 11 males兲 participated and were paid or given partial
course credit. All were native speakers of American English
and reported no hearing problems at the time of testing. They
were not fluent in Spanish and did not have native Spanish-
J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Vol. 116, No. 6, December 2004
speaking parents. However, 31 participants had other family
members or close friends with a Spanish accent. Data from
one additional participant were excluded because the partici-
pant exceeded a 20% error rate. Participants were randomly
assigned to the three conditions 共16 each in accent, control,
and no accent兲.
2. Design
Four blocks of four auditory sentences were presented to
each group with no breaks between blocks. In each block,
two sentences were followed by matching visual probe
words 共yes trials兲, and two were followed by mismatching
visual probe words 共no trials兲. Four block orders were cre-
ated using a Latin square design such that, across partici-
pants, every sentence was presented in every block position.
Within each group, an equal number of listeners heard each
of the four block orders.
Because between-participants RT comparisons were
necessary, and given the typically high RT variability among
participants, all experimental RTs were normalized according
to a separate measure of each participant’s speed at the task:
Following the experimental trials, all listeners received eight
baseline trials. The sentences in these trials were novel and
were produced by a different nonaccented speaker. The mean
RT for these trials was subtracted from the experimental RTs
for each subject, and the difference RTs were the primary
dependent measure of processing speed.1
3. Stimulus materials
We used 32 low probability 共LP兲 sentences from the
Revised Speech Perception In Noise 共SPIN-R兲 test 共Bilger,
1984; Kalikow et al., 1977兲. In LP sentences, the final word
is not predictable from the meaning of the sentence 共e.g.,
Ruth must have known about the pie.兲. The 16 experimental
sentences were recorded by a female native speaker of
American English 共age: 31兲 and by a female native speaker
of Mexican Spanish 共age: 45; age of English acquisition: 30兲.
In an earlier study, the native Spanish speaker’s accent was
given a mean rating of 6.1 on a scale of 1 共no foreign accent兲
to 9 共strong foreign accent兲. The eight practice and eight
baseline sentences were recorded by another female native
speaker of American English 共age: 19兲.
Sentences were tape recorded in a quiet room using an
Electro-Voice RE16 directional microphone, a DBX 760X
microphone preamplifier, and a Tascam 122 mkII tape deck.
Stimuli were digitized 共Macintosh PowerPC 8100; 22.05
kHz, 16 bits兲, and each sentence was copied into its own file
with silence at the beginning and end trimmed. Each stimu-
lus file was peak normalized to 90% of maximum amplitude
resolution.
Because processing efficiency was measured by percep-
tual identification of the final word of each sentence 共the
target word兲, the characteristics of these words were care-
fully controlled. Target words in the experimental sentences
were familiar, monosyllabic nouns with a mean frequency of
22 per million 共Kucera and Francis, 1967兲. In both the ac-
cented and nonaccented productions, they were each cor-
rectly identified in isolation by more than 70% of listeners in
C. M. Clarke and M. F. Garrett: Rapid adaptation to accent 3649
 TABLE I. Mean percent error 共untransformed; and standard deviations兲 by experimental block according to
voice condition for experiments 1–3.
Condition 1 2
Experiment 1
Accent 14.06 共15.73兲
Control 3.13 共8.54兲
No accent 1.56 共6.25兲
Experiment 2
Accent 6.25 共11.18兲
Control in noise 14.06 共15.73兲
Experiment 3
Accent 1.79 共5.25兲
Control in clear 2.38 共5.94兲
Control in noise 11.90 共12.71兲
a prior word intelligibility experiment (M accented⫽92.4%;
M nonaccented⫽95.8%).2 Target words were never repeated
within the experiment.
To control for differences in duration, the accented and
nonaccented productions of each target word were digitally
compressed or lengthened so they both equaled the mean
duration of the two original productions.3 The accented
words were lengthened by a mean of 15% 共range: ⫹5% to
⫹28%兲, and the nonaccented words were compressed by a
mean of 11% 共range: ⫺5% to ⫺18%兲. Stimuli were not re-
screened for intelligibility, but the duration manipulations
were minimal and produced little to no distortion. The mean
durations of the preceding portion of each sentence were
similar for the two voices (M accented⫽1.29 s; M nonaccented
⫽1.36 s) and were not altered.
For half of the experimental trials, the visual probe word
did not match the target word but was a phonetic neighbor
differing by one phoneme in either the onset 共one case兲,
vowel 共four cases兲, or coda 共three cases兲 position. These
words were also monosyllabic English nouns and were simi-
lar to the target words in mean frequency 共20 per million兲.
4. Procedure
Listeners were tested individually in a quiet room in
front of a computer monitor and a two-button response box.
They were instructed to respond quickly and accurately and
were warned that at some time during the experiment the
voice would change. This voice change occurred between
blocks 3 and 4 for the control condition, and between block
4 and the baseline trials for the accent and no accent condi-
tions. The experiment began with eight practice trials, fol-
lowed by four experimental blocks 共16 trials兲, and then eight
baseline trials. Trials in the practice and baseline blocks were
presented in the same order for every subject. In each experi-
mental block, sentence order was randomized differently for
each subject.
Auditory stimuli were presented over headphones at ap-
proximately 73 dB共A兲 sound pressure level. Stimulus presen-
tation and response collection were controlled by an IBM
compatible computer using DMDX software 共Forster and
Forster, 2003兲. Each trial began with an auditory sentence
3650 J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Vol. 116, No. 6, December 2004
Block
3 4
4.69 共10.08兲 10.94 共15.73兲 4.69 共10.08兲
1.56 共6.25兲 0.00 共0.00兲 9.38 共15.48兲
1.56 共6.25兲 6.25 共11.18兲 0.00 共0.00兲
4.69 共13.60兲 6.25 共14.43兲 6.25 共14.43兲
10.94 共12.81兲 3.13 共8.54兲 4.69 共10.08兲
2.38 共5.94兲 7.14 共11.50兲 3.57 共6.96兲
2.38 共5.94兲 1.19 共4.37兲 4.17 共7.35兲
13.10 共14.60兲 11.90 共12.71兲 4.17 共7.35兲
followed immediately by a probe word presented in capital
letters on the computer screen. The probe remained until the
listener pressed the yes or the no button. Accuracy and reac-
tion time feedback were provided on the computer screen
after each response. RT measurement began at probe word
onset. If a response did not occur within 4 s, it was recorded
as no response. Participants pressed a foot pedal to begin the
next trial.
B. Results and discussion
For all analyses, the between-participants block order
counterbalancing variable was included in the analysis of
variance 共ANOVA兲 to remove variance due to counterbal-
ancing. If there was no effect involving counterbalancing
group by a conservative criterion of p⬍0.25 共see Pollatsek
and Well, 1995兲, the analysis was performed with groups
collapsed over this variable. To avoid confusion with the
experimental group variable, the counterbalancing group
variable will be denoted by cbg. We used an alpha level of
0.05 for all analyses, and the modified Bonferroni correction
共Keppel, 1982兲 to control alpha inflation in planned con-
trasts.
1. Errors
Incorrect and no response trials were counted as errors.
Mean error rates for the experimental blocks are shown in
Table I. Error data were first transformed to rationalized arc-
sine units 共RAU兲 to convert percent error to a linear and
additive scale 共Studebaker, 1985兲. To test for differences
among conditions for the first three blocks, a 3 共group兲⫻3
共block: 1–3兲⫻4 共cbg兲 mixed design ANOVA was performed.
This revealed a significant effect of group, F(2,36)⫽5.68,
no effect of block, F(2,72)⫽2.33, ns, and a marginal inter-
action, F(4,72)⫽2.16, p⫽0.08. Tamhane post hoc tests for
unequal variances showed the accent group’s error rate was
higher than the control group’s, t(18)⫽3.07, and marginally
higher than the no accent group’s, t(23)⫽2.30, p⫽0.09. Fi-
nally, for block 4, a 3 共group兲⫻4 共cbg兲 ANOVA showed a
main effect of group, F(2,36)⫽3.49. A Tamhane post hoc
C. M. Clarke and M. F. Garrett: Rapid adaptation to accent

FIG. 1. Experiment 1 mean difference reaction times 共experimental
⫺baseline兲 according to condition. Error bars indicate standard errors.
test for unequal variances showed the control group’s error
rate was marginally higher than the no accent group’s,
t(15)⫽2.52, p⫽0.07.
The higher error rate for the accent group in the first
three blocks was unexpected because the accented target
words had been screened for intelligibility. Although only
correct responses were used in the RT analyses, they may
have included more guess responses, which do not reflect the
time course of accurate phonological analysis and may have
inflated the RTs. We note this issue here and return to it in
experiment 3.
2. Reaction time
The following data treatment applied to this and all sub-
sequent RT analyses. Only RTs from correct responses were
analyzed. RTs less than 200 ms or greater than 2000 ms were
excluded, and RTs beyond two standard deviations above or
below a given participant’s mean for experimental and base-
line trials were replaced with that cutoff value. Each partici-
pant’s mean baseline RT was subtracted from that individu-
al’s experimental block mean RTs. These difference RTs
were used as the dependent measure.
Mean difference RTs for the experimental blocks are
shown in Fig. 1. RTs for the accent group decreased by over
150 ms from block 1 to block 4. This was statistically sig-
nificant by a one-way ANOVA for the accent condition with
block as a repeated measures variable, F(3,45)⫽13.24.
Planned contrasts indicated RT decreased significantly be-
tween block 1 (M ⫽178, SD⫽109.62) and block 2 (M
⫽80, SD⫽97.41), t(15)⫽3.24, and between block 3 (M
⫽61, SD⫽77.66) and block 4 (M ⫽10, SD⫽65.34), t(15)
⫽2.52. This decrease in RT is consistent with the hypothesis
that processing efficiency increases with brief exposure to
accented speech.
To assess the possibility that practice with the task could
account for the RT change, the accent and control groups’
RTs for block 4 were compared. A 3 共group兲⫻4 共cbg兲
ANOVA included this as well as the comparison of the ac-
cent and no accent conditions. A significant effect of group
was found, F(2,36)⫽5.50, and planned contrasts showed
that the accent group (M ⫽10, SD⫽65.34) was significantly
J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Vol. 116, No. 6, December 2004
faster than the control group (M ⫽111, SD⫽117.27), t(36)
⫽3.03, but did not differ from the no accent group (M
⫽21, SD⫽102.31), t(36)⫽0.34, ns. The control group lis-
teners, who had as much experience with the task, but no
prior experience with the accented voice, were significantly
slower than the accent group listeners in block 4 when pre-
sented with the accented voice. This indicates that the accent
group’s improvement across the four blocks cannot be ex-
plained by practice effects alone. The results also show no
difference between the accent and no accent groups in block
4, suggesting that after only 16 sentences of exposure, the
group hearing the accented speech was processing it as
quickly as the group hearing native speech.
Two effects in the first three blocks were also of interest:
共a兲 whether listeners were slower to respond to the Spanish-
accented speech than to the native speech, and 共b兲 whether
the control and no accent groups’ RTs decreased as they were
exposed to the nonaccented voice. A 3 共group兲⫻3 共block:
1–3兲 mixed ANOVA showed a significant main effect of
group, F(2,45)⫽4.91. Planned contrasts indicated that, for
the first three blocks, the accent group (M ⫽106, SD
⫽71.35) was slower than both the control group (M ⫽44,
SD⫽89.68), t(45)⫽2.18, and the no accent group (M
⫽20, SD⫽79.20), t(45)⫽3.04. The slower RT to accented
speech is consistent with previous findings of processing dif-
ficulty with foreign-accented speech 共Munro and Derwing,
1995b兲. There was also a significant main effect of block,
F(2,90)⫽17.94, but no group⫻block interaction, F(4,90)
⫽1.20, ns, suggesting all groups improved across the first
three blocks.
Overall, the results matched experimental predictions.
Listeners were initially slower to respond to the Spanish-
accented speech, but this difficulty decreased after a rela-
tively brief period of exposure. At the end of 16 sentences,
mean RT had decreased by over 150 ms and was almost
identical to the no accent group’s RT to native speech. Given
that each sentence was approximately 2 seconds long, this
exposure comprised less than 1 min of speech. Although
practice effects likely played some part in the RT change
across blocks, as indicated by the improvement in the first
three blocks for the control and no accent groups, it cannot
explain the entire effect for the accent group.
III. EXPERIMENT 2
The control condition in experiment 1 ruled out practice
effects as an account of the accent group’s improvement over
the four experimental blocks. However, another possible rea-
son for that improvement is that the listeners in the accent
condition developed strategies for understanding difficult
speech, such as depending on the fact that the final word was
always a noun, or putting more effort or attention into the
task.
Experiment 2 was conducted to evaluate these explana-
tions. Noise was added to the nonaccented sentences in the
control condition to make them more difficult to understand.
A signal-to-noise ratio 共SNR兲 was chosen such that overall
RTs to the nonaccented speech in noise were similar to RTs
to the accented speech in the clear. Under these new condi-
tions, results for block 4 would remain the same as for ex-
C. M. Clarke and M. F. Garrett: Rapid adaptation to accent 3651
periment 1 if the accent group is learning something specific
about how to process accented speech during exposure,
rather than learning general strategies or increasing effort. A
no accent condition was not included.
A. Method
1. Participants
Thirty-two University of Arizona undergraduates 共22 fe-
males, 10 males兲 participated and were paid or given partial
course credit. All were native speakers of American English
and reported no hearing problems at the time of testing. They
were not fluent in Spanish and did not have native Spanish-
speaking parents. However, 11 participants had other family
members or close friends with a Spanish accent. Data from
one additional participant were excluded because the partici-
FIG. 2. Experiment 2 mean difference reaction times 共experimental
pant exceeded a 20% error rate. Participants were randomly
⫺baseline兲 according to condition. Error bars indicate standard errors.
assigned to the two conditions 共16 each to accent and control
in noise兲.
significant by a 4 共block兲⫻4 共cbg兲 mixed ANOVA for the
2. Stimulus materials
accent condition, F(3,36)⫽8.83. Planned contrasts showed
Materials were identical to those in experiment 1. Using that RT decreased significantly between block 1 (M ⫽223,
Cool Edit 96 wave-editing software 共Syntrillium Software, SD⫽165.55) and block 4 (M ⫽36, SD⫽157.73), t(12)
Phoenix, AZ兲, the amplitude of the nonaccented sentences
⫽3.71, and between block 3 (M ⫽128, SD⫽141.44) and
was reduced to a mean of approximately 65 dB at the final
block 4, t(12)⫽3.18. Finally, a 2 共group兲⫻4 共cbg兲 ANOVA
word, and pink noise at 61 dB was added. The resulting
comparing the two voice conditions in block 4 showed that
mean SNR at the final word was approximately ⫹4 dB.
the accent group (M ⫽36, SD⫽157.73) was significantly
3. Procedure faster than the control in noise group (M ⫽143, SD
⫽121.69), F(1,24)⫽5.14.
Experimental procedures and block counterbalancing
Experiment 2 replicated the effect of increased process-
were identical to experiment 1, except that listeners in the
ing efficiency with short-term exposure to accented speech.
control group were warned that the first several sentences
were in noise. RTs for the accent group again decreased across the four
blocks, and were faster than those of the control in noise
B. Results and discussion group in the last block of the experiment. Because the con-
ditions were equated for difficulty, the assumption that the
1. Errors
accent group developed general strategies for coping with
Mean error rates for the experimental blocks are shown difficult speech would also apply to the control group. Yet
in Table I. Error rates for blocks 1–3 were higher for the the control listeners still took longer to process the accented
control in noise group 共9.38%兲 than for the accent group speech in block 4.
共5.73%兲. However, a 2 共group兲⫻3 共block: 1–3兲⫻4 共cbg兲
An important question regarding rapid adaptation to ac-
mixed ANOVA on the transformed error percentages 共in
cented speech is the effect of previous long-term experience
RAUs兲 revealed only a marginal effect of group, F(1,24)
with the accent in question. As noted earlier, a large propor-
⫽3.75, p⫽0.06. A one-way ANOVA on block 4 showed no
tion of listeners in experiments 1 and 2 had close family
significant difference between groups, F⬍1.
members or friends with a Spanish accent. In order to deter-
2. Reaction time mine whether the adaptation effect differed based on such
experience, the data from the accent groups in the two ex-
Mean difference RTs for the experimental blocks are
periments were combined, and the high experience listeners
shown in Fig. 2. To test whether the noise made the control
(n⫽15) compared with the low experience listeners (n
condition more difficult, a 2 共group兲⫻3 共blocks: 1–3兲⫻4
共cbg兲 mixed ANOVA 共Huynh–Feldt corrected because the ⫽17). High experience listeners were defined as stated
assumption of sphericity was violated兲 was performed on the above, and low experience listeners were those who reported
difference RTs for the first three blocks. There was no main either never having personally known anyone with a Spanish
effect of group, F⬍1, suggesting that the two conditions accent or only having Spanish-accented acquaintances with
were equated in difficulty for effects on RT. There was a whom they spent little time. Inspection of the data in Table II
significant main effect of block, F(2,48)⫽5.63, but no group shows both subgroups improved across the four blocks. Fur-
⫻block interaction, F⬍1, showing that both group’s RTs ther, in block 1 the low experience subgroup was over 80 ms
decreased equally across the first three blocks. slower than the high experience subgroup, although this defi-
Mean RT for the accent group decreased by almost 200 cit was eliminated by block 4. But the trend indicating an
ms from block 1 to block 4. This change was statistically advantage for the high experience subgroup was not statisti-

3652 J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Vol. 116, No. 6, December 2004 C. M. Clarke and M. F. Garrett: Rapid adaptation to accent
TABLE II. Mean difference reaction times 共in ms; and standard deviations兲
for accent conditions according to experience with the accent 共subgroups are
combined for experiments 1 and 2兲.
Block
Experience 1 2 3 4
Experiments 1 and 2
Low 239 共137.16兲 146共149.90兲 103共106.97兲 17 共89.59兲
High 157 共134.30兲 107共151.09兲 84共130.96兲 29共149.47兲
Experiment 3
Low 143 共158.21兲 70共124.72兲 30共110.91兲 11共110.64兲
cally reliable. A 2 共accent experience兲⫻4 共block兲⫻4 共cbg兲
mixed ANOVA 共Huynh–Feldt corrected for nonsphericity兲
revealed a main effect of block, F(2.94,70.54)⫽17.32, but
no effect of accent experience, F⬍1, or interaction,
F(2.94,70.54)⫽1.40, ns.
Although previous accent experience was not of central
interest in this study, the subgroup analysis suggests that it
may affect how efficiently accented speech is perceptually
processed, at least initially. However, the important result is
that even those listeners with little prior experience with a
Spanish accent showed faster RTs with brief exposure. This
indicates the processing improvement is due to on-line learn-
ing, rather than previous knowledge. Experiment 3 further
investigates this hypothesis by testing adaptation effects for a
less familiar accent.
IV. EXPERIMENT 3
Experiment 3 explored whether the effect of rapid adap-
tation would be found with another and less familiar accent,
specifically a Chinese accent. This accent is less likely to be
encountered by the participant population 共living in Tucson,
AZ兲 than the Spanish accent. It is possible that listeners can
quickly adapt to accented speech only if they are already
familiar with the accent. Otherwise, adaptation may require
more experience 共possibly on the order of hours as in previ-
ous training studies兲. If adaptation to an unfamiliar accent
requires relatively long exposure, it would suggest that the
adaptation effects found in experiments 1 and 2 were due to
a quick accessing and application of stored knowledge of a
generally familiar accent, rather than an on-line adaptation
process.
Three conditions were tested: an accent condition, in
which all four sentence blocks were produced by a Chinese-
accented speaker, a control in clear condition 共similar to the
control condition in experiment 1兲, and a control in noise
condition 共similar to the control in noise condition in experi-
ment 2兲. In contrast to the first two experiments, 24 experi-
mental sentences 共six per block兲 were used rather than 16
共four per block兲 because a pilot study showed that RTs to the
Chinese-accented voice were slower overall than to the
Spanish-accented voice of the previous two experiments.
Also, although RTs became faster across the four blocks in
the pilot experiment, they were not significantly faster on the
fourth block than those of the control in noise group, sug-
gesting that listeners might need more exposure to the
Chinese-accented speech to fully adapt to it. It is not clear
J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Vol. 116, No. 6, December 2004
whether this is because of the Chinese accent itself or the
specific voice, which was rated as more accented than the
Spanish-accented voice in the previous accent judgment ex-
periment. Using six sentences per block was intended to in-
sure that we could detect adaptation to the Chinese-accented
voice.
The control in clear condition was included to test once
again the prediction that RTs would initially be slower for
accented speech than for nonaccented speech. A retest of this
prediction was needed because we discovered that the intel-
ligibility of the Spanish-accented target words in experi-
ments 1 and 2 may have been lower than intended: As noted
earlier, the accent group had a higher error rate than the other
groups in experiment 1. We also conducted a second intelli-
gibility screening in which the target words were presented
in the sentence context used in the experiment 共rather than in
isolation兲. With this method, several of the accented words
used in experiments 1 and 2 had intelligibility rates less than
70%. Low intelligibility rates raise the possibility that, in
experiments 1 and 2, the accent groups’ RTs included several
guess responses, which might be responsible for the higher
mean RTs rather than the hypothesized slower processing of
intelligible accented words. For the present experiment, only
target words that had greater than 70% intelligibility in the
experimental sentence context were selected.
We predicted that RT would decrease across the four
blocks for the accent condition and that, in the last block, the
accent group would be faster than both control groups. This
was based on the assumption that the effects of short-term
experience found in experiments 1 and 2 were not due to
accessing a stored template for interpreting Spanish-accented
speech, but instead resulted from on-line learning of phono-
logical patterns.
A. Method
1. Participants
Eighty-four University of Arizona undergraduates 共44
females, 40 males兲 participated and received partial course
credit. All were native speakers of American English who
reported no hearing disorders at the time of testing. They
were not fluent in Chinese and did not have native Chinese-
speaking parents. However, 20 participants had other family
members or close friends with a Chinese accent. Data from
one additional participant were excluded because the partici-
pant reported a strategy of not looking at the screen until
after each sentence ended. Participants were randomly as-
signed to the three conditions 共28 each to accent, control in
clear, and control in noise兲.
2. Stimulus materials
A new set of 40 LP sentences was chosen from the Re-
vised SPIN Test 共Bilger, 1984; Kalikow et al., 1977兲. The 24
experimental sentences 共six per block兲 were selected based
on their intelligibility when produced by the Chinese- and
nonaccented voices. Each of the sentence final words was
identified at greater than 70% accuracy in the LP sentence
context by a separate group of listeners (M accented⫽94.32;
M nonaccented⫽99.16).4 The target words from the experimen-
tal sentences were familiar, monosyllabic nouns with a mean
C. M. Clarke and M. F. Garrett: Rapid adaptation to accent 3653
frequency of 20 per million 共Kucera and Francis, 1967兲. Tar-
get words were never repeated within the experiment.
The experimental sentences were recorded by the same
female native speaker of American English as in experiments
1 and 2 and by a female native speaker of Mandarin Chinese
共age: 24, age of English acquisition: 12兲. The Chinese speak-
er’s accent was given a mean rating of 7.6 on a scale from 1
共no foreign accent兲 to 9 共strong foreign accent兲 in an earlier
study. The practice and baseline sentences were produced by
the same female native speaker as in experiments 1 and 2.
The Chinese-accented sentences were recorded according to
the procedures described in experiment 1. In order to match
the nonaccented sentences with the highly intelligible
Chinese-accented sentences, the native speaker of American
English recorded additional sentences. These were recorded
onto CD in a WhisperRoom sound isolation booth using a
Shure SM57 Dynamic microphone, a Symetrix 302 micro-
phone preamplifier, and an Alesis ML-9600 disc recorder
共44.1 kHz, 16 bits兲.5 The stimulus file was downsampled to
22.05 kHz, and each sentence was copied into its own file,
trimmed, and peak normalized to 90% of maximum ampli-
tude resolution.
In order to control for differences in duration, the ac-
cented and nonaccented productions of each target word
were digitally compressed or lengthened so they both
equaled the mean duration of the two original productions.
The same procedure was used to equate the sentence material
up to the final word because this portion was produced ap-
proximately 250 ms slower on average by the accented
voice. For the accented voice, the final word durations were
modified by a mean of ⫹4% 共range: ⫺10% to ⫹19%兲, and
the precursor portions by a mean of ⫺7% 共range: ⫺16% to
⫹3%兲. For the nonaccented voice, the final word durations
were modified by a mean of ⫺3% 共range: ⫺14% to ⫹13%兲,
and the precursor portions by a mean of ⫹10% 共range: ⫺3%
to ⫹23%兲. Again, the duration manipulations produced little
to no distortion, and the stimuli were not rescreened for in-
telligibility.
The mean sound level measured at the final word was
approximately 74 dB for the Chinese-accented sentences and
approximately 69 dB for the nonaccented sentences in the
control in clear condition.6 For the control in noise condition,
the mean amplitude was lowered to approximately 63 dB at
the final word, and pink noise at 62 dB was added to each
file, for a mean SNR of ⫹1 dB. In a pilot study, this SNR
resulted in RTs similar to those in the accent condition. Fi-
nally, for experimental trials in which the visual probe word
did not match the corresponding target word, the probes dif-
fered from their targets by one phoneme in either the onset
共four cases兲, vowel 共four cases兲, or coda 共four cases兲 posi-
tion, and were similar to the target words in mean frequency
共21 per million兲.
3. Procedure
Experimental procedures and counterbalancing were
identical to the previous experiments except that experimen-
tal blocks consisted of six sentences 共three yes trials, three no
trials兲 instead of four.
3654 J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Vol. 116, No. 6, December 2004
FIG. 3. Experiment 3 mean difference reaction times 共experimental
⫺baseline兲 according to condition. For blocks 1–3, each mean is based on
six trials. For block 4, means are based on two, four, and six trials. Error
bars indicate standard errors.
B. Results and discussion
1. Errors
Mean error rates for the experimental blocks are shown
in Table I. A 3 共group兲⫻3 共block: 1–3兲⫻4 共cbg兲 mixed
ANOVA on the percent error data in RAUs revealed a main
effect of group, F(2,72)⫽45.86, and no effect of block or
interaction. Planned contrasts showed a higher error rate for
the control in noise group than for the accent group, t(72)
⫽7.42, and no difference between the accent and control in
clear groups, t(72)⫽1.53, ns. A 3 共group兲⫻4 共cbg兲 ANOVA
on block 4 showed no significant difference among groups,
F⬍1.
2. Reaction time
Mean RTs for the experimental blocks are shown in Fig.
3. To verify that the reduction in SNR in the control in noise
condition equated the RTs in the first three blocks with those
of the accent group, and to test whether listeners were slower
to respond to the accented voice than to the native voice 共in
the clear兲, a 3 共group兲⫻3 共blocks: 1–3兲⫻4 共cbg兲 mixed
ANOVA was performed. There were significant main effects
of block, F(2,144)⫽36.92, and group, F(2,72)⫽3.26, but
no interaction, F⬍1. Planned contrasts showed that the ad-
dition of noise in the control condition was successful in
equating RTs for the control in noise (M ⫽104, SD
⫽119.59) and accent (M ⫽87, SD⫽137.42) conditions,
t(72)⫽0.57, ns. In addition, the accent group was margin-
ally slower than the control in clear group (M ⫽28, SD
⫽93.34), t(72)⫽1.87, p⫽0.06. The difference between the
accent and control in clear groups may have been smaller
than expected because the accent group adapted to the
Chinese-accented voice within the 18 sentences of blocks
1–3. To equate this analysis with the corresponding analysis
in experiment 1, the group difference for blocks 1 and 2 only
共12 sentences兲 was tested. For the first two blocks, the accent
group (M ⫽115, SD⫽160.15) was significantly slower than
the control in clear group (M ⫽45, SD⫽106.28), t(72)
⫽2.01. RTs to the Chinese-accented speech were initially
slower than to the native speech, despite the fact that the
C. M. Clarke and M. F. Garrett: Rapid adaptation to accent
intelligibility of the Chinese-accented speech was high, and
the error rates were similar for the accent and control in clear
conditions. The results are again consistent with Munro and
Derwing’s 共1995b兲 findings that accented speech is pro-
cessed more slowly than native speech even when it is highly
intelligible.
RTs for the accent group decreased by just over 130 ms
from block 1 to block 4. This change was statistically sig-
nificant by a 4 共block兲⫻4 共cbg兲 mixed ANOVA 共Huynh–
Feldt corrected for nonsphericity兲, F(2.53,60.71)⫽16.23.
Planned contrasts showed that RT decreased significantly be-
tween block 1 (M ⫽151, SD⫽181.45) and block 2 (M
⫽79, SD⫽148.30), t(24)⫽4.47, and between block 2 and
block 3 (M ⫽30, SD⫽119.60), t(24)⫽2.43. Listeners re-
sponded faster to the Chinese-accented voice over the course
of 24 sentences.
A one-way ANOVA on block 4 RTs tested whether the
accent group was faster than the control groups. A significant
effect of group was found, F(2,81)⫽5.82, and planned con-
trasts showed the accent group (M ⫽20, SD⫽109.60) was
significantly faster than the control in clear group (M
⫽118, SD⫽105.39), t(81)⫽3.39, but was not significantly
faster than the control in noise group (M ⫽60, SD
⫽111.86), t(81)⫽1.39, ns. The predicted advantage for the
accent group in block 4 was borne out in the comparison
with the control in clear group but, unexpectedly, not in the
comparison with the control in noise group.
One difference between this experiment and the previ-
ous experiments was that six sentences were included in
block 4, rather than four. Given that the accent groups’ RTs
decreased significantly after only a few sentences, specifi- FIG. 4. Single-trial means of difference reaction times 共experimental
cally from block 1 to block 2, in both experiment 1 and the ⫺baseline兲 in blocks 1 共top兲 and 4 共bottom兲 of experiment 3.
current experiment, the control groups in the current experi-
ment may have adapted to the Chinese-accented speech control in noise group (M ⫽125, SD⫽164.94), t(80)
within block 4. If so, averaging across more sentences in ⫽2.38. When only the first two sentences of block 4 were
block 4 would attenuate the difference between the control considered, the accent group was significantly faster than
and accent conditions. To investigate this possibility, the both control groups.
mean RTs for block 4 were recomputed based on only the If adaptation could occur for the control in noise group
first four sentences, making them equivalent to the means in within only a few sentences of exposure to the accented
the first two experiments. A one-way ANOVA on the four- voice, the same pattern might also be seen for the accent
trial means for block 4 revealed an effect of group, group in the first block, when they were first exposed to the
F(2,81)⫽4.29. Planned contrasts again showed significantly accented voice. Examination of the mean RTs for each sen-
faster times for the accent group (M ⫽19, SD⫽129.02) than tence in block 1, shown in the top graph of Fig. 4, indeed
for the control in clear group (M ⫽118, SD⫽122.85), suggests a similar pattern. The accent group appears to im-
t(81)⫽2.87. In addition, the accent group was now margin- prove dramatically within the first three or four sentences.
ally faster than the control in noise group (M ⫽86, SD Experiment 3 indicates that the adaptation effect found
⫽135.54), t(81)⫽1.94, p⫽0.056. in experiments 1 and 2 for Spanish-accented speech also oc-
Inspection of the mean RTs for each sentence in block 4 curs during perception of a Chinese accent. The population
provides further insight into the situation. As shown in the sampled in this experiment have generally less opportunity
bottom graph of Fig. 4, RTs for the accent and control in to hear Chinese-accented speech in the ambient environment,
clear groups are relatively constant throughout the block, but in contrast to Spanish-accented speech, and few 共24%兲 re-
the control in noise group seems to have adapted to the ported having a close friend or family member with a Chi-
Chinese-accented voice within two or three sentences. Con- nese accent. To determine whether the adaptation effect in
sistent with this hypothesis, a one-way ANOVA for means experiment 3 occurred for those listeners least familiar with
based on the first two sentences of block 4 again showed a the accent, a reanalysis was performed including only par-
significant effect of group, F(2,80)⫽3.99, and planned con- ticipants who reported either never having known anyone
trasts now showed that the accent group (M ⫽15, SD with a Chinese accent or only having Chinese-accented ac-
⫽142.95) was significantly faster than both the control in quaintances with whom they spent little time 共accent: n
clear group (M ⫽132, SD⫽207.43), t(80)⫽2.50, and the ⫽21; control in clear: n⫽21; control in noise: n⫽22; see

J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Vol. 116, No. 6, December 2004 C. M. Clarke and M. F. Garrett: Rapid adaptation to accent 3655
TABLE III. Mean difference reaction times 共in ms; and standard deviations兲
in block 4 based on two-trial means. 关n⫽number of participants. Means in
the same row with different subscripts differ significantly 共see text for type
of analysis for each experiment兲.兴
Block 4 trials
Condition n 1&2 3&4 5&6
Accent
Experiment 1 16 ⫺17 共59.27兲 47 共131.23兲
Experiment 2 15 78 共154.34兲 21 共197.55兲
Experiment 3 28 15 共142.95兲 25 共148.76兲 19 共131.42兲
Control in clear
Experiment 1 16 114 共142.70兲 118 共165.34兲
Experiment 3 27 132 共207.43兲 130 共171.28兲 137 共169.39兲
Control in noise
Experiment 2 16 203a (184.23) 90b (120.29)
Experiment 3 28 125a (164.94) 48b (152.88) 10b (124.69)
Table II兲. The same pattern of effects was found: the accent
group sped up across the four blocks, F(2.89,49.08)⫽8.78
共with Huynh–Feldt correction for nonsphericity兲, the control
in clear group was slower than the accent group in block 4,
t(61)⫽3.22, and the control in noise group was slower than
the accent group when the first two trials of block 4 were
considered, t(61)⫽2.03.
The analysis of only the less experienced listeners
should be interpreted somewhat cautiously because the block
order counterbalancing was not maintained when the more
experienced participants were excluded. Nevertheless, it in-
dicates that the effect was not specific to the experienced
listeners alone. The findings with Chinese-accented speech
are consistent with the idea that processing improves due to
on-line perceptual learning of phonological patterns, rather
than a precompiled phonological template. However, Chi-
nese accents are not entirely novel to this participant popu-
lation, so this possibility cannot be completely ruled out.
The control in noise group’s rapid RT decrease within
block 4 indicates that adaptation to accented speech may
occur even more quickly than the initial results of this study
suggested. To test this more sharply, post hoc analyses were
done for block 4 RT data from all three experiments using
two-trial means 共see Table III兲. For experiment 1, t-tests
showed that there was no change in RT from the first two
trials to the second two trials of block 4 for either the accent
or control 共in clear兲 conditions, t(15)⫽1.76accent and
0.09control , ns. For experiment 2, RTs for the accent group
did not change, t(14)⫽1.32, ns, but the control in noise
group got significantly faster from the first two to the second
two trials of block 4, t(15)⫽2.63. In experiment 3, ANOVAs
showed that neither the accent group’s nor the control in
clear group’s RTs changed during block 4, F’s⬍1. However,
the control in noise group’s RTs decreased significantly,
F(2,54)⫽7.18. Planned contrasts indicated a significant de-
crease by the second two trials, t(27)⫽2.51.
The results are generally consistent. For the accent
groups in all three experiments, RT did not change during
block 4, as expected given that listeners in this condition had
already adapted to the accented voice. For the two control in
clear conditions 共experiments 1 and 3兲, RT did not change
during block 4, but for the two control in noise conditions
3656 J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Vol. 116, No. 6, December 2004
共experiments 2 and 3兲, RT significantly decreased during
block 4. It is not clear why the control in clear groups did not
adapt to the accented voice within the fourth block as the
control in noise groups did. One possibility relates to task
difficulty. Because the first three blocks were likely easier for
the control in clear groups, they may have been putting less
effort into the task. When the accented voice was introduced,
they may have been caught off guard by the new difficulty.
In contrast, listeners in the control in noise conditions may
have already been making substantial effort and were readier
to deal with the new perceptual challenge. Although this in-
terpretation is post hoc, it suggests a role for attention in the
process of adaptation to accented speech and is consistent
with evidence that normalization to native voice characteris-
tics consumes processing capacity 共e.g., Sommers et al.,
1994; for a review, see Nusbaum and Magnuson, 1997兲. On
a methodological note, this finding also shows that measures
of processing speed over time must be fine-grained enough
to detect very rapid changes.
V. GENERAL DISCUSSION
This study demonstrated that listeners adapt very
quickly to accented speech. Initial processing speed is slower
for accented speech, but in all three experiments this deficit
attenuated with less than one minute of experience. In some
circumstances, adaptation required exposure to only two to
four sentence-length utterances. The inclusion of control
groups discounted the possibility that the effect was purely
due to practice with the task or general strategies for han-
dling difficult speech. Further, the extension of the adapta-
tion effect to a less familiar accent is consistent with the
hypothesis that the listeners learned the characteristics of the
accented speech on-line.
One limitation of this study is that, in the control condi-
tions, there was a change in voice as well as a change in
accent, whereas the accent conditions had the same voice
throughout. This confound is difficult to avoid. Ideally the
same speaker would produce both the native and accented
samples, but it is questionable whether one speaker can pro-
duce both ‘‘dialects’’ authentically. It is possible that a
change in voice alone, apart from a change in accent, could
induce a normalization process that could account for the
slower RTs for the control groups. The only estimate of the
magnitude of RT effects due to voice change using natural
speech we are aware of is Mullennix et al.’s 共1989兲 naming
study. Mean naming latencies were 34 and 70 ms slower in
mixed-talker conditions than in single-talker conditions.
However, the usefulness of this estimate is questionable be-
cause the stimuli included male and female voices, and nam-
ing times are not directly comparable to the RT data of the
present study. We see it as unlikely that a change from one
female voice to another would cause the approximately
100-ms slow-down found in this study. Nevertheless, effects
of this factor should be investigated in future work. The
voice change could also cause a more global ‘‘shock’’ reac-
tion, which might slow response times. Although listeners
were warned that the voice would change at some point dur-
ing the experiment, this explanation cannot be ruled out.
C. M. Clarke and M. F. Garrett: Rapid adaptation to accent
 Another method for removing the confound might be to
add a voice change to the accent condition by presenting a
different voice with the same accent in block 4. This experi-
ment, however, would test a subtly different question. A find-
ing of generalization of learning from one voice to another
requires not only that the listener adjusts phonological pro-
cessing to match the characteristics of the current speaker,
but that those adjustments are sufficiently abstract to be ap-
plied in a new context 共taking voice as context兲. The ques-
tion of generalization is very interesting, but we are currently
satisfied to establish only the first requirement. That is, it is
acceptable to us that the current data demonstrate only that
the listeners adapted to the specific accented voice they
heard. We suspect that adaptation to one voice would indeed
generalize to a new voice. But adaptation to a single ac-
cented voice is no less impressive even if generalization is
not found. The listener is still initially confronted with
speech patterns that deviate from native norms and adjusts
his or her perceptual processing to more effectively decode
them.
The findings of rapid adaptation to foreign-accented
speech provide new evidence for the type of normalization
first shown by Ladefoged and Broadbent 共1957兲, in which
the acoustic-phonetic criteria for a vowel category were al-
tered based on the characteristics of a preceding sentence.
We believe that a similar kind of ‘‘extrinsic’’ normalization
occurred in the present experiments 共Nearey, 1989兲. Speech
that deviated from native norms was evaluated more effi-
ciently when recent experience provided information about
the systematic ways in which it departed from those norms.
A known problem for the extrinsic normalization hy-
pothesis is explaining how the initial segments or words are
correctly evaluated when there is no previous input upon
which to calibrate. The approach suggested by Nearey
共1989兲 in his discussion of native speech is the same one
offered here. There are usually enough cues within a segment
or syllable that identification can be quite accurate even with
no previous experience with the speaker 共Shankweiler et al.,
1977兲. This is probably largely true even for accented
speech. For example, within-category deviations from native
phoneme prototypes can be identified and noted without any
additional reference information. In addition, there are likely
certain kinds of information that can be extracted from the
speech signal at a low level, such as general vocal tract pos-
ture and speech rhythm. Once some of these properties of the
speech are learned, they themselves can improve processing
efficiency as well as bootstrap the learning of more complex
phonological patterns. Finally, in most real world situations,
higher level knowledge of the lexical, semantic, syntactic,
and situational context can contribute to the perceptual learn-
ing of accented speech.
Rapid adaptation to foreign-accented speech is a clear
demonstration of the remarkable flexibility of spoken word
recognition. Traditional models of spoken word recognition
do not address how this flexibility is achieved. Most assume
phonetic context effects can be predicted and hard-wired,
and that interspeaker variability can be solved at an early
stage with intrinsic or extrinsic vocal-tract normalization.
The models then typically focus on an architecture based on
J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Vol. 116, No. 6, December 2004
abstract linguistic units 关e.g., PARSYN 共Luce et al., 2000兲,
Shortlist 共Norris, 1994兲, TRACE 共McClelland and Elman,
1986兲兴.
However, interspeaker variability includes more than
differences in vowel space dimensions. In particular, it ex-
tends to higher levels of phonological representation, includ-
ing phonetic context rules, syllable structure, and prosodic
patterns. This is clearly true for accented speech, but also
applies to idiolect and dialect differences among native
speakers 共Klatt, 1988兲. Therefore, the traditional concept of
speaker normalization should be expanded to include inters-
peaker variability in complex phonological regularities, in
addition to simple acoustic properties, and must be integrated
as a critical and foundational aspect of spoken word recog-
nition.
Recent attention to perceptual learning in speech percep-
tion 共e.g., Norris et al., 2003; Pisoni, 1997兲 suggests some
promising lines for theory development. Theories that ac-
count for the adaptability of spoken word recognition have
potentially strong affinities with enriched conceptions of ba-
sic human learning capacities. A striking challenge in the
integration of learning theories and language processing per-
formance will be the need to accommodate such theory to
the rapidity with which effective change occurs. Further re-
search is needed to explore the characteristics of this remark-
able adaptability and uncover its boundary conditions. What
are the consequences of rapid adaptation for long-term lin-
guistic representations? Are the various aspects of speech
learned with a single learning mechanism or a variety? How
do the physical input and previous linguistic knowledge in-
teract to drive adaptation? Answers to these and related ques-
tions will form the foundation for better accounts of speech
perception as well as accounts of how the speech domain
relates to other cognitive capacities.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was supported by an NSF Graduate Research
Fellowship to CMC and by the Cognitive Science Program at
the University of Arizona. We are grateful to Georgine Sper-
anzo for assisting with data collection. We also thank Ken
Forster, Rebecca Gomez, Mike Hammond, Paul Luce, David
Pisoni, and Natasha Warner for helpful discussion of the
ideas presented here and Paul Luce for useful comments on
this manuscript.
1
To verify that the experimental groups did not differ systematically on the
baseline measure, the baseline data in each of the three experiments were
analyzed. No significant differences among groups were found.
2
Four of the native English speaker’s target words were not included in the
earlier word identification test. These missing values were replaced by her
mean for the purpose of a paired-items t-test comparing the percent correct
identification for the two voices. The difference between voices was not
statistically significant, t(15)⫽1.33, ns.
3
Duration was manipulated using the pitch-synchronous overlap and add
共PSOLA兲 algorithm 共Moulines and Charpentier, 1990兲 provided in the Praat
wave-editing program 共Paul Boersma and David Weenink, University of
Amsterdam兲. This algorithm uniformly modifies the duration of a wave-
form with minimal change in its pitch or spectral characteristics. For voiced
portions of the signal, each pitch period is multiplied by a bell-shaped
window and adjacent windows are overlapped and added according to the
compression factor. For voiceless portions, the windows are spaced equally.
The technique is widely used and results in high quality speech.
C. M. Clarke and M. F. Garrett: Rapid adaptation to accent 3657
4
A paired-items t-test comparing the percent correct identification for the
two voices was statistically significant, t(23)⫽2.42, p⬍0.05, indicating the
nonaccented words were more intelligible. It is difficult to exactly equate a
non-native speaker’s intelligibility with a native speaker’s. However, the
Chinese-accented target words were still highly intelligible: 20 of the 24
words 共83%兲 were identified correctly by over 90% of listeners in the
screening test.
5
Due to different recording circumstances, the new stimuli had a more tinny
quality than the original sentence stimuli resulting from greater amplitude
of the frequencies above approximately 3 kHz. In order to equate the sound
quality, the new stimulus files were filtered using the Cool Edit 2000 soft-
ware package. Amplitudes of the frequencies above 3 kHz were linearly
reduced from 100% at 3 kHz to approximately 5% at 9.5 kHz to 0% at 10.5
kHz using a passive filter with an FFT size of 8192 and a Blackman win-
dowing function. This produced a similar sound quality to the original
recordings as judged by the first author.
6
Although the stimuli in the accent and control in clear conditions differed
by 5 dB, the fact that the accent condition was louder predicts a perceptual
advantage for the accented voice, which is opposite to the experimental
prediction for the first three blocks.
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