Rethinking dual-task interference on speech: Evidence from spectro-temporal reduction, within-word Vowel-to-Vowel coarticulation, and acoustic variability

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Abstract
Speaking while doing something else is a daily situation speakers adapt to spontaneously. Dual-task experiments show such adaptation, but how speech is modified remains unclear. This study investigates how concurrent visuo-cognitive-motor tasks modulate speech, focusing on spectro-temporal vowel reduction, within-word vowel-to-vowel coarticulation, and acoustic variability during repeated production of a fixed sentence. Twenty-seven young adult participants performed a speech task alone at the beginning and end of the experiment and concurrently with two non-verbal tasks varying in attentional demand. Speakers in the multitasking condition produced more spectrally centralized and shorter vowels, increased coarticulation, and reduced variability across repetitions. These effects on speech were not modulated by the attentional demand of the concurrent non-verbal task. A repetition effect was found on vowel centralization, which was higher in the last single condition than in the first, but this did not override the dual-task effect. These findings expand upon traditional views of dual-task interference as inherently detrimental or beneficial and question the contribution of attention to speech motor control.
Funding Information
  • Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung (FNS CRSII5_173711)
  • Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung (FNS CRSII5_202228)
  • inIdEx project EFL (ANR-18-IDEX-0001)

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