Processing Fluency, Perceptual Adaptation, and Language Attitudes: Does Adaptation Improve Comprehension Ease and Attitudes Toward Speakers with Non-Native Accents?

Abstract

Negative attitudes toward non-native speakers of English are well-documented and have adverse impacts on English learners in a variety of settings. Recent research has proposed that (i) disfluent processing of accented speech (i.e., the metacognitive feeling of effort that accompanies perceiving and integrating information) and (ii) stereotypes and categories associated with specific accents both play a role in these negative attitudes. Previous research has also shown that comprehension of accented speech becomes more accurate over time as listeners perceptually adapt to unfamiliar speech patterns. This dissertation tests the hypothesis that adaptation through listening experience leads to less effortful processing and thereby more positive attitudes, and more broadly investigates the relationship among processing fluency, the subjective perception of fluency, and attitudes toward a speaker with a non-native accent. In two experiments, participants listened to and transcribed sentences recorded by a speaker in either a non-native or native guise. The non-native accent was selected, based on pre-tests, to be difficult to categorize (e.g., as a native speaker of Spanish), in order to minimize attitude stereotypes associated with judgments of ethnicity or nationality and better isolate the influence of processing fluency. In Experiment 1, all participants listened to the sentences in clear audio. In Experiment 2, participants listened to sentences either in clear audio or mixed with speech-shaped noise, which provided an additional manipulation of processing fluency. Objective fluency was assessed using transcription accuracy in both experiments, in addition to pupil dilation during listening and transcription time in Experiment 1. Subjective fluency and attitudes toward the speaker on the dimensions of warmth, competence, and social closeness were measured at intervals using scale-response questions. The results show that pupil dilation and transcription time decrease with experience with a non-native accent, indicating improved objective processing fluency, though transcription accuracy results unexpectedly did not show evidence for adaptation to the accent. The results also provide no evidence that listeners’ subjective perception of fluency or attitudes toward the speaker change as objective fluency improves. Analysis of the relationship between these variables indicates that listeners’ perception of effort in comprehending non-native accented speech is more closely related to their attitudes and social evaluations of the speaker, rather than to objective processing effort. This dissertation adds two main contributions to research on the comprehension of and attitudes toward non-native speakers. First, it provides evidence that comprehension of non-native accented speech becomes easier over time using a physiological measure (pupil dilation) in addition to behavioral measures. Second, by comparing objective fluency, subjective fluency, and attitudes in the same task, it shows that the perception of effort does not necessarily reflect objective effort in comprehending accented speech, but instead appears to be associated with listeners’ social judgments. For listeners who experience difficulty understanding non-native accented speech, comprehension is likely to get easier in a short period of time as their cognitive systems adapt to unfamiliar speech patterns. The more a listener recognizes this increased ease, the more that ease may lead to improved attitudes toward the speaker.