Recognizing Foreign Accents Helps Brain Process Accented Speech

By Anonymous -
            The article “Recognizing Foreign Accents Helps Brain Process Accented Speech,” published by Journal of Neurolinguistics, is about a study pertaining to accent identification and the way our brains have the ability to process the foreign-accented speech more accurately. Janet van Hell, native to the Netherlands, is a professor of psychology and linguistics as well as a co-director of the Center for Language Science. She has noticed that her foreign accent changed the way she interacted with others and the way others interacted with her. This study observed how individuals process foreign-accent speech and native-accent speech by measuring neural signals that relate to listening and comprehending the sentences spoken. As the participants listened to the sentences, the researchers were recording the brain activity of the participants with an electroencephalogram. After listening to a sentence, the researchers asked the participants if they could identify any vocabulary or grammar errors. The sentences were spoken in an American-English accent and a Chinese-English accent. There were 39 participants were monolingual, native English speakers around college-aged. These participants had little to no exposure to foreign accents. By using personal pronouns, the researchers were able to test grammar comprehension. The researchers tested vocabulary by substituting words that had no relation to one another within a sentence. The participants were able to identify the vocabulary errors and the grammar errors with an average accuracy rate of 90%. The brain responses between the two accents differed when processing errors. In a follow-up analysis, participants were asked to identify the accent they were listening to. The results showed that participants who identified the Chinese-English accent had the same response for foreign and native accents were able to identify the grammar and vocabulary errors. On the other hand, participants who did not identify the Chinese-English accent were able to respond to vocabulary error but not grammar errors.

            I found this article interesting due to the fact that it is a study based on language. It was intriguing to read that the participants who were not able to identify the Chinese-English accent were mostly able to respond to vocabulary errors and not both grammar and vocabulary errors. This article relates to our language and audition lectures. The accents were amplified in the auditory canal, and the vibrations are collected and transmitted to the ossicles by the tympanic membrane. The ossicles send the vibrations to the cochlea in the inner ear, which converts auditory stimuli into neural energy, and the sounds can be processed. The accents the participants listened to was processed and heard by the primary cortex which is was mainly processed by the ventral stream or the “what” system in the frontal lobe. Van Hell stated her plans to engage in a study to further this one by observing how our brains process the differences in regional accents and dialects in our native language. Van Hell would be interested in the different Appalachia dialects and the way we process foreign-accented speech while living in that foreign country. If this study were to be replicated to a certain degree and one aspect had to change, then I would change the participants. For example, look at both monolingual and bilingual/multilingual participants with little to no exposure as well as separating the two groups by gender. It would be interesting to see if students depending on gender and who know two or more languages are capable with pinpointing vocabulary errors as well as grammar errors in both foreign and native accents. 

Link: http://neurosciencenews.com/accented-speech-neuroscience-6456/

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