The Relationship Between Phonemic Category Boundary Changes and Perceptual Adjustments to Natural Accents
Zheng, Y., & Samuel, A. G. (2020). The relationship between phonemic category boundary changes and perceptual adjustments to natural accents. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 46(7), 1270–1292. https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000788
Abstract
People often experience difficulties when they first hear a novel accent. Prior research has shown that
relatively fast natural accent accommodation can occur. However, there has been little investigation of
the underlying perceptual mechanism that drives the learning. The current study examines whether
phonemic boundary changes play a central role in natural accent accommodation. Two well-established
boundary shifting phenomena were used here—recalibration and selective adaptation—to index the
flexibility of phonemic category boundaries. Natural accent accommodation was measured with a task in
which listeners heard accented words and nonwords before and after listening to English sentences
produced by one of two native Mandarin Chinese speakers with moderate accents. In two experiments,
participants completed recalibration, selective adaptation, and natural accent accommodation tasks
focusing on a consonant contrast that is difficult for native Chinese speakers to produce. We found that:
(a) On the accent accommodation task, participants showed an increased endorsement of accented/
mispronounced words after exposure to a speaker’s accented speech, indicating a potential relaxation of
criteria in the word recognition process; (b) There was no strong link between recalibrating phonemic
boundaries and natural accent accommodation; (c) There was no significant correlation between recalibration
and selective adaptation. These results suggest that recalibration of phonemic boundaries does not
play a central role in natural accent accommodation. Instead, there is some evidence suggesting that
natural accent accommodation involves a relaxation of phonemic categorization criteria.