Cooper, A. , Paquette-Smith, M. , Smith, K. , Peng, C. & Johnson, E.
University of Toronto
Children under 19 months of age do not spontaneously recognize familiar words spoken in unfamiliar accents (e.g., Best et al., 2009). Only one study has reported adaptation to an unfamiliar accent in children under 19 months, and this study involved pre-exposure to a familiar storybook read by a speaker of the unfamiliar accent (Van Heugten et al., 2014). In the current study, we build on this literature by exposing two groups of children (ages 16-18 months and 21-24 months, n=32) to a 10-minute live storybook reading by either an Australian-accented or a Mandarin-accented English speaker. Children then completed a preferential looking task, where they viewed two familiar objects and heard one of them being named. Both Australian and Mandarin speakers named pictures in this task, and as such the accent was either familiar or unfamiliar to the child. Preliminary results demonstrate both age groups were significantly above chance at recognizing accented words, regardless of accent familiarity. Young toddlers' (16-18 months) ability to recognize familiar words spoken in an unfamiliar accent was surprising. Potential explanations include the possibility that live exposure triggered children to adopt a general expansion strategy that enabled them to recognize words in both familiar and unfamiliar accents.