(Not so) Great Expectations: Listening to Foreign-Accented Speech Reduces the Brain's Anticipatory Processes

Niels O Schiller; Bastien P-A Boutonnet; Marianne L S De Heer Kloots; Marieke Meelen; Bobby Ruijgrok; Lisa L-S Cheng

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.02143

(Not so) Great Expectations: Listening to Foreign-Accented Speech Reduces the Brain's Anticipatory Processes

Front Psychol. 2020 Aug 25:11:2143. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.02143. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Niels O Schiller^{1

2}, Bastien P-A Boutonnet¹, Marianne L S De Heer Kloots¹, Marieke Meelen¹, Bobby Ruijgrok^{1

2}, Lisa L-S Cheng^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Leiden University Centre for Linguistics, Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands.
² Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, Leiden, Netherlands.

Abstract

This study examines the effect of foreign-accented speech on the predictive ability of our brain. Listeners actively anticipate upcoming linguistic information in the speech signal so as to facilitate and reduce processing load. However, it is unclear whether or not listeners also do this when they are exposed to speech from non-native speakers. In the present study, we exposed native Dutch listeners to sentences produced by native and non-native speakers while measuring their brain activity using electroencephalography. We found that listeners' brain activity differed depending on whether they listened to native or non-native speech. However, participants' overall performance as measured by word recall rate was unaffected. We discussed the results in relation to previous findings as well as the automaticity of anticipation.

Keywords: Dutch; foreign-accented speech; native vs. non-native speech processing; prediction; sentence comprehension; speech perception.