van Heugten, M. 1 & Johnson, E. 2
1 Laboratoire de Sciences Cognitives et Psycholinguistique, CNRS/EHESS/DEC-ENS
2 University of Toronto
Infants have been found to experience great difficulty contending with accent variability (e.g., Best et al., 2009). This could potentially have negative consequences for children growing up hearing multiple variants of their native language. We here examine how routine exposure to accented speech may alter infants? early word form recognition in the regionally dominant variant of their language. Forty English-learning 12.5-month-olds were tested. Although all infants received at least 90% of their total language input in English, the amount of exposure to Canadian-accented English differed. Half of the infants listened almost exclusively to the dominant regional variant (native accent group; ~96% Canadian English); the other half listened to multiple English accents (mixed accent group; on average ~34% Canadian English). Importantly, the total English input did not differ between the two groups (99% vs 98% respectively), as established by a questionnaire. In addition, none of the parental report measures on the MacArthur-Bates CDI revealed significant differences between the groups. Using the Headturn Preference Procedure, infants were presented with lists containing either known (e.g. ball) or nonsense words (e.g. bog) produced by a Canadian-accented speaker. Word recognition in this paradigm is evidenced by a listening preference for known over nonsense words (e.g., Swingley, 2005, Vihman et al., 2004). If repeated exposure to accented English delays word recognition in the dominant variant, such preference may emerge earlier in the native compared to the mixed accent group. Indeed, only infants in the native accent group listened longer to the known than the nonsense words. Preliminary results of a follow-up study further suggest that by 14.5 months of age, infants in the mixed accent group appear to have overcome this difficulty in recognizing Canadian-accented words. Reduced exposure to the regionally dominant accent may thus induce a short delay in word recognition in the regional accent.