Rachel Schmale

Previous work reveals that toddlers can accommodate a novel accent after hearing it for only a brief period of time. A common assumption is that children, like adults, cope with nonstandard pronunciations by relying on words they know (e.g. ‘this person pronounces sock as sack, therefore by black she meant block’). In this paper, we assess whether toddlers might additionally use a general expansion strategy, whereby they simply accept non‐standard pronunciations when variability is expected. We exposed a group of 24‐month‐old English‐learning toddlers to variability in indexical cues (very diverse voices from native English talkers), and another to variability in social cues (very diverse‐looking silent actors); neither group was familiarized with the target novel accent. At test, both groups succeeded in recognizing a novel word when spoken in the novel accent. Thus, even when no lexical cues are available, variability can prepare young children for non‐standard pronunciations.

Both subjective impressions and previous research with monolingual listeners suggest that a foreign accent interferes with word recognition in infants, young children, and adults. However, because being exposed to multiple accents is likely to be an everyday occurrence in many societies, it is unexpected that such non‐standard pronunciations would significantly impede language processing once the listener has experience with the relevant accent. Indeed, we report that 24‐month‐olds successfully accommodate an unfamiliar accent in rapid word learning after less than 2 minutes of accent exposure. These results underline the robustness of our speech perception mechanisms, which allow listeners to adapt even in the absence of extensive lexical knowledge and clear known‐word referents.A video abstract of this article can be viewed at http: ⁄ ⁄www.youtube.com ⁄watch?v=bYnaZkMyKtY&feature=youtu.be

In most of the world, people have regular exposure to multiple accents. Therefore, learning to quickly process accented speech is a prerequisite to successful communication. In this paper, we examine work on the perception of accented speech across the lifespan, from early infancy to late adulthood. Unfamiliar accents initially impair linguistic processing by infants, children, younger adults, and older adults, but listeners of all ages come to adapt to accented speech. Emergent research also goes beyond these perceptual abilities, by assessing links with production and the relative contributions of linguistic knowledge and general cognitive skills. We conclude by underlining points of convergence across ages, and the gaps left to face in future work.

By their second birthday, children are beginning to map meaning to form with relative ease. One challenge for these developing abilities is separating information relevant to word identity (i.e. phonemic information) from irrelevant information (e.g. voice and foreign accent). Nevertheless, little is known about toddlers' abilities to ignore irrelevant phonetic detail when faced with the demanding task of word learning. In an experiment with English-learning toddlers, we examined the impact of foreign accent on word learning. Findings revealed that while toddlers aged 2 ; 6 successfully generalized newly learned words spoken by a Spanish-accented speaker and a native English speaker, success of those aged 2 ; 0 was restricted. Specifically, toddlers aged 2 ; 0 failed to generalize words when trained by the native English speaker and tested by the Spanish-accented speaker. Data suggest that exposure to foreign accent in training may promote generalization of newly learned forms. These findings are considered in the context of developmental changes in early word representations.

Toward the end of their first year of life, infants’ overly specified word representations are thought to give way to more abstract ones, which helps them to better cope with variation not relevant to word identity (e.g., voice and affect). This developmental change may help infants process the ambient language more efficiently, thus enabling rapid gains in vocabulary growth. One particular kind of variability that infants must accommodate is that of dialectal accent, because most children will encounter speakers from different regions and backgrounds. In this study, we explored developmental changes in infants’ ability to recognize words in continuous speech by familiarizing them with words spoken by a speaker of their own region (North Midland‐American English) or a different region (Southern Ontario Canadian English), and testing them with passages spoken by a speaker of the opposite dialectal accent. Our results demonstrate that 12‐ but not 9‐month‐olds readily recognize words in the face of dialectal variation.

In six experiments with English-learning infants, we examined the effects of variability in voice and foreign accent on word recognition. We found that 9-month-old infants successfully recognized words when two native English talkers with dissimilar voices produced test and familiarization items (Experiment 1). When the domain of variability was shifted to include variability in voice as well as in accent, 13-, but not 9-month-olds, recognized a word produced across talkers when only one had a Spanish accent (Experiments 2 and 3). Nine-month-olds accommodated some variability in accent by recognizing words when the same Spanish-accented talker produced familiarization and test items (Experiment 4). However, 13-, but not 9-month-olds, could do so when test and familiarization items were produced by two distinct Spanish-accented talkers (Experiments 5 and 6). These findings suggest that, although monolingual 9-month-olds have abstract phonological representations, these representations may not be flexible enough to accommodate the modifications found in foreign-accented speech.