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Influences of foreign accent on preschoolers’ word recognition and story comprehension

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 March 2014

BRITTAN A. BARKER  and
LINDSAY MEYER TURNER
BRITTAN A. BARKER*
Affiliation:
Louisiana State University
LINDSAY MEYER TURNER
Affiliation:
Louisiana State University
*
ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE Brittan A. Barker, Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Louisiana State University, Hatcher Hall, Room 63, Baton Rouge, LA 70803. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

To better understand how talker-specific information influences spoken language processing in different experimental listening tasks, we examined the effect of a foreign accent on preschoolers’ word recognition and story comprehension. In Experiment 1, preschoolers listening to words presented by a native-accented talker recognized significantly more words than did preschoolers listening to words presented by a foreign-accented talker. In Experiment 2, preschoolers listening to a story narrated by a native-accented talker demonstrated significantly lower comprehension accuracy compared to preschoolers listening to a foreign-accented narrator. These findings underscore the importance of the experimental task when examining and making claims about the influence of accent information on young children's spoken language processing.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 36 , Issue 5 , September 2015 , pp. 1111 - 1132
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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