Foreign accents reduce false recognition rates in the DRM paradigm

ABSTRACT

More cognitive resources are required to comprehend foreign-accented than native speech. Focusing these cognitive resources on resolving the acoustic mismatch between the foreign-accented input and listeners’ stored representations of spoken words can affect other cognitive processes. Across two studies, we explored whether processing foreign-accented speech reduces the activation of semantic information. This was achieved using the DRM paradigm, in which participants study word lists and typically falsely remember non-studied words (i.e. critical lures) semantically associated with the studied words. In two experiments, participants were presented with word lists spoken both by a native and a foreign-accented speaker. In both experiments we observed lower false recognition rates for the critical lures associated with word lists presented in a foreign accent, compared to native speech. In addition, participants freely recalled more studied words when they had been presented in a native, compared to a foreign, accent, although this difference only emerged in Experiment 2, where the foreign speaker had a very strong accent. These observations suggest that processing foreign-accented speech modulates the activation of semantic information.

Highlights

• The DRM paradigm was used to explore whether semantic activation is reduced when processing foreign-accented speech.

• Across two experiments, false recognition of non-studied semantic associates was lower when word lists were presented in a foreign accent, compared to native speech.

• The above results suggest semantic activation may be reduced when processing foreign-accented speech.

• Additionally, it was found that when the foreign speaker had a mild accent, correct recall of studied words was uninfluenced. If the foreign speaker had a strong accent, however, correct recall of studied words was reduced.

KEYWORDS:

• Foreign-accented speech
• semantic processing
• DRM paradigm
• recognition
• false memory

Acknowledgements

In loving memory of Albert Costa. We thank Xavier Mayoral and Silvia Blanch for their technical support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Carlos Romero-Rivas http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8413-189X

Craig Thorley http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3207-435X

Albert Costa https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8477-5609

Notes

1 However, different studies have shown no relationship between intelligibility and comprehensibility for accented speech (e.g., Derwing & Munro, 1997; Weil, 2003). Thus, “an accented speech sample can be rated as highly intelligible, but difficult to process at the same time” (Floccia, Butler, Goslin, & Ellis, 2009).

2 Logit mixed models were used in the analyses of recognition rates to avoid problems associated with using ANOVAs when analysing categorical data (Jaeger, 2008). R (R Core Team, 2016) scripts from Luthra et al. (2018; osf.io/5b7ct) were adapted for our purposes, using the glmer function of the lme4 package (Bates, Maechler, Bolker, & Walker, 2015). For further details on the models and scripts, please refer to Luthra et al. (2018).

3 We used non-parametric indices because the recognition data were negatively skewed (see Figure 1).

Additional information

Funding

CRR was supported by a MINECO predoctoral grant for pre-doctoral researchers from the Spanish government (BES-2012-056668). AC was supported by two grants from the Spanish Government (PSI2011-23033, and PSI2014-52181-P), a grant from the Pla de Recerca i Innovació de Catalunya, Generalitat de Catalunya (2017SGR268), and a grant from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no. 613465 (AThEME).