Leiden University Student Repository

Heer Kloots, Marianne de (2017)

The influence of fluency: ERP effects in the processing of foreign-accented speech

Bachelor thesis | Taalwetenschap (BA)

In previous studies, linguistic anticipatory processes in the brain have been investigated extensively, but mostly in a monolingual environment where native speakers of a certain language were listening to native speakers of the same language. In this study, we investigated the effect of non-native speech on predictions made by native listeners of Dutch, in a within-subjects design. We used highly predictive sentence contexts in combination with mismatched articles in order to measure the anticipatory effects before the occurence of the predicted noun. We found both an early (120 - 300 ms) and a late (400 - 600 ms) ERP negativity which were affected independently by the speaker accent variable: when participants listened to foreign-accented speech, the early negativity disappeared. However, behavioural performance, as measured by a subsequent lexical recognition task, was not affected by speaker accent. We argue that the results from our experiment have implications for the...Show moreIn previous studies, linguistic anticipatory processes in the brain have been investigated extensively, but mostly in a monolingual environment where native speakers of a certain language were listening to native speakers of the same language. In this study, we investigated the effect of non-native speech on predictions made by native listeners of Dutch, in a within-subjects design. We used highly predictive sentence contexts in combination with mismatched articles in order to measure the anticipatory effects before the occurence of the predicted noun. We found both an early (120 - 300 ms) and a late (400 - 600 ms) ERP negativity which were affected independently by the speaker accent variable: when participants listened to foreign-accented speech, the early negativity disappeared. However, behavioural performance, as measured by a subsequent lexical recognition task, was not affected by speaker accent. We argue that the results from our experiment have implications for the interpretation of the N400 as well as the proposed Phonological Mismatch Negativity effects and consequently provide an interesting view on the specifics of top-down sentence comprehension.Show less

psycholinguistics

foreign-accented speech

prediction

EEG/ERP

multilingualism

Author

Heer Kloots, Marianne de

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Specialisation

Language and Cognition

Supervisors

Cheng, Lisa

ECTS Credits

10

Language

en