Acoustic distance explains speaker versus accent normalization in infancy

Paola Escudero, Karen E. Mulak, Samra Alispahic

    Research output: Chapter in Book / Conference PaperConference Paperpeer-review

    Abstract

    ![CDATA[Acoustic/phonetic differences exist in cross-speaker and crossaccent speech. Young infants generally recognize speech across speakers but not across speakers of different accents. We examined how Australian English infants discriminated Dutch vowels produced by two speakers of the same accent, and by two speakers of two different accents. Acoustic analysis showed that the acoustic distance between samevowel tokens produced by speakers of different accents was larger than between those produced by speakers of the same accent. Infants demonstrated greater difference in looking time to an accent than a speaker change, indicating that they noticed a difference in a vowel produced in a different accent more than one produced by another speaker with the same accent. This supports the hypothesis that acoustic distance underlies the relative ease in handling speaker versus accent variation.]]
    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationProceedings of the 15th Australasian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology (SST2014), 2-5 December 2014, Rydges Latimer Hotel, Christchurch, New Zealand
    PublisherAustralasian Speech Science and Technology Association
    Pages80-83
    Number of pages4
    Publication statusPublished - 2014
    EventAustralasian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology -
    Duration: 2 Dec 2014 → …

    Publication series

    Name
    ISSN (Print)1039-0227

    Conference

    ConferenceAustralasian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology
    Period2/12/14 → …

    Keywords

    • speech perception
    • English language
    • Dutch language
    • vowels
    • variation

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