Linguistic Processing of Accented Speech Across the Lifespan

In other words, younger infants fail not because they are unable to implement compensatory strategies to “correct” for the accent, but rather because they reject the accented speech as a potential implementation of their native language. However, an alternative cognitive interpretation is that these early preferences are driven by ease of processing. For example, it may be that young infants have a difficult time processing unfamiliar variants, and thus implicitly dislike the non-native variant (this is a possibility that we discuss in greater detail in See Concluding Remarks). As they age, their processing abilities may expand (e.g., vocabulary size, working memory, selective attention), and thus they may find it easier to process even the unfamiliar properties of accented speech. This would occur in the domain of accent processing similar to the way it occurs in other cognitive domains that involve processing at more than one level. For example, as working memory increases, the child is able to process both the social valence of an accent (Kinzler et al., 2007), and its linguistic content simultaneously.

Categorization of regional and foreign accent in 5- to 7-year-old British children. J. Behav. 33, 366–375.

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Thus, one possibility is that older infants are better at segmenting words because most of them have accumulated more experience with diverse talkers, which allowed them to develop linguistic strategies to cope with talker variability. But there are many other alternatives; to give just one example, they may have also undergone experience-independent advancements in cognitive skills recruited by the task, such as selective attention and working memory. These advancements could be clearer when processing accented speech because infants are not at ceiling in that task. One aspect of accented speech perception that we have not covered pertains to links between speech and social evaluation. Listeners engage in social processing during the course of speech recognition, since processing indexical information is not independent from processing of linguistic information (e.g., Mullenix and Pisoni, 1990). Even if the listener has no previous experience with an accent, and therefore cannot evaluate it based on its social valence, speech streams that are harder to process are not as well-liked (Alter and Oppenheimer, 2009).

But it is still unclear whether this cost is greater or smaller than that found in younger adults, and whether adaptation occurs at the same or a different pace, with the same or different mechanisms. You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. The greatest contribution of the research reviewed in this section centers on the study of factors that structure individual variation in performance. Recent results suggest that accent perception, at least in this population, is greatly affected by linguistic (e.g., vocabulary size) and cognitive (e.g., executive control) dimensions. At this point, however, it remains difficult to determine to what extent initial processing costs and effects of short-term exposure are qualitatively different (i.e., recruit a different profile of speech perception mechanisms) in younger and older adults. As with research in childhood, we feel that this is an understudied population, and hope future work will shed further light on these already interesting results.

This is important because other research suggests infants are very sensitive to acoustic mismatches in the wordforms they hear (Singh et al., 2004). For example, infants sometimes fail to recognize words across very different voices (Houston and Jusczyk, 2000; but see van Heugten and Johnson, 2012). In a typical segmentation task, infants are first familiarized with a wordform (e.g., they hear the word “candle” produced in isolation several times). At test, they are presented with several passages, regional accents present challenges for natural language processing. only half of which contain the familiarized wordform, and the presentation of the passages is contingent on infants’ attention. When the same voice, speaking in the infants’ native accent, is used in familiarization and test, even 7.5-month-olds reliably prefer passages containing the familiar wordform (Jusczyk and Aslin, 1995). This is already no small feat, given that word segmentation is an incredibly complex task, as there is no single reliable cue to word boundaries in all languages.

With the rise of online shopping, customers now expect personalized and easy support from e-commerce stores. Adopting AI advancements such as Machine Learning (ML) and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) can revolutionize customer service. ML helps analyze customer data to predict needs, offering personalized support and recommendations. Whereas, RPA automates repetitive tasks such as data entry and order processing, enhancing customer service efficiency. In addition to spreading false and fictitious information, AI in journalism poses several other risks. It may misinterpret sarcasm or metaphors, oversimplify language at the expense of crucial details, and trap users in filter bubbles by analysing their behaviour to make content suggestions.

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60, 487–501. Mason, H. M. Understandability of speech in noise as affected by region of origin of speaker and listener. Speech Monogr. 13, 54–68.

Since accented speech is more difficult to process, it could be routinely disliked at an implicit level. A fuller discussion of the social perception of accent across development awaits a separate review. Behavioral measures of multi-talker speech perception reveal not only a processing cost, but also phenomena that can be compared to the short-term perceptual adaptation effects and long-term effects of exposure noted above. Akin to accent adaptation, repeated exposure to a given talker aids speech processing in a variety of tasks. First, word recognition under difficult processing conditions or in the presence of noise is enhanced when the listener has some experience with the talker (Nygaard et al., 1994; Nygaard and Pisoni, 1998). Recognizing spoken-words in noise is facilitated even when the familiarization phase only involves lip-reading (Rosenblum et al., 2007).

The financial capacity and expansive operational scale of large enterprises position them as key contributors to the adoption of sophisticated and tailored Text-to-Speech technologies, securing their prominence in this market segment. Large enterprises dominate the Text-to-Speech market based on organization size due to their substantial resources, comprehensive infrastructure, and sophisticated technological needs. These organizations often require scalable and feature-rich solutions to meet diverse and complex requirements across various sectors. Large enterprises can invest in and deploy robust Text-to-Speech systems seamlessly, integrating them into their extensive networks and applications. Global Text-to-Speech market size is expected to be valued at USD 4.0 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach USD 7.6 billion by 2029; growing at a CAGR of 13.7% during the forecast period from 2024 to 2029. The team behind market.us, marketresearch.biz, market.biz and more.

Additionally, when assessing populations as different as infants and adults, we simply cannot assume that the linguistic system is organized in the same way. For example, infants may not parse speech into phone-sized categories that are limited to the native inventory, assigning them symbolic labels. Certainly, these theoretical challenges complicate the interpretation of findings within the realm of infant and child research, and render it more difficult to draw inferences from research carried out at many ages across the lifespan. Other work suggests that toddlers also benefit from more naturalistic exposure to a complex accent Schmale et al. (2012) exposed toddlers to brief stories with no accompanying visual referent. Thus, no effort was made to train toddlers on the host of phonetic changes imposed by a natural Spanish accent. After 2 min of exposure to such speech, 24-month-olds were able to recognize a newly learned word across their native accent and the foreign accent.

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Results showed that children succeeded in this task only if the unfamiliar accent was a foreign accent, and not a within-language accent. Additional experiments showed that children were able to hear the within-language accent differences in a simple discrimination task, albeit to a lesser extent than foreign accent differences. This was interpreted as evidence that children were more sensitive, or aware of, unfamiliar foreign accents than of unfamiliar within-language accents.

Infancy 16, 392–417. Adank, P., and McQueen, J. M. “The effect of an unfamiliar regional accent on the speed of word processing,” in Proceedings of the XVIth International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Saarbrücken, 1925–1928. Furthermore, AI can simplify complex language, transforming intricate reports into more accessible and comprehensible content.

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Similarly, it is impossible to describe foreign accent as always being more distinct from the listener’s native language than an unfamiliar within-language accent. A common misconception is that dialects differ only in sound instantiation, but not suprasegmentally, whereas two languages will be different both at the segmental and the suprasegmental level. This is simply not the case. For instance, Dutch is rhythmically more similar to Standard Southern British (SSB) than Glaswegian English (White et al., 2012); therefore, it could be easier for SSB-learning infants to segment words in Dutch or Dutch-accented English than in Glaswegian English.

Cognition 106, 833–870. Schmale, R., Cristià, A., Seidl, A., and ChatGPT Johnson, E. K. Infants’ word segmentation across dialects.

• A decrease of preference for the native over the non-native variety has been taken as evidence that infants learn to interpret the unfamiliar accents as a variant of the native accent.
• For example, Janse and Adank (2012) report that both measures of selective attention and vocabulary predicted adaptation in a group of older adults.
• The cost-effectiveness of cloud deployment is particularly attractive to businesses seeking efficient and budget-friendly solutions, especially smaller enterprises.
• To our knowledge, this is the first review that aims to assemble findings on infant, child, and adult accent perception.
• Konstantinos Antonopoulos, a journalist at the Al Jazeera Media Institute, envisions several key tasks that AI can perform to assist journalists in their work.
• The overall market size was calculated based on the revenues of the key players identified in the market.

Winters, S. J., Levi, S. V., and Pisoni, D. B. Identification and discrimination of bilingual talkers across languages. 123, 4524–4538. Perrachione, T. K., Pierrehumbert, J. B., and Wong, C. M. Differential neural contributions to native- and foreign-language talker identification.

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The empirical and theoretical contribution that research with children has made to our understanding of the development of language production is simply extraordinary. There is every reason to believe that it will be just as insightful to evaluate the development of perception, as in childhood there are dramatic changes in lexical and cognitive development, which could play a role in accented speech perception. Beyond this issue of interpretation, it is clear that young infants are sensitive to the acoustic changes introduced by different linguistic varieties. Consequently, one may wonder whether infants are able to segment wordforms when suprasegmental and subphonemic cues are altered by accented speech.

• 46, 1093–1096.
• According to The Guardian, the AI presenter was modelled after Xinhua Agency presenter Qiu Hao by processing facial and voice data using machine learning.
• Burda, A. N., Scherz, J. A., Hageman, C. F., and Edwards, H. T.
• During childhood, the ability to retrieve meaning from accented speech improves with age (Nathan et al., 1998).
• Surprisingly, only 38% of surveyed journalists believe AI poses a threat to their job security.
• Moreover, the degree to which processing an unfamiliar within-language accent resembles processing an unfamiliar foreign accent at any given age is an empirical matter and probably depends on the dimension of focus.

Technological advancements in the Text-to-Speech market are marked by the evolution of AI-driven tools, fostering more natural language processing capabilities. Continuous improvements in voice synthesis enhance the lifelike quality of generated speech. Pronunciation clarity and voice modification technologies are advancing, addressing previous challenges. Moreover, the integration of TTS in various applications, from navigation devices to virtual assistants, reflects the ongoing innovation driving the market forward.

Alternatively, it could also increase the challenge of processing unusual speech patterns, because less information is available. Aging also impacts cognitive function, including speed of processing, working memory, long-term memory, and inhibition or cognitive control (a recent review in Park and Reuter-Lorenz, 2009). Accented speech imposes both linguistic and cognitive load challenges for the listener (see Concluding Remarks for further discussion).

Our purpose is to keep our customers ahead of the game with regard to the markets. They may fluctuate up or down, but we will help you to stay ahead of the curve in these market fluctuations. Our consistent growth and ability to deliver in-depth analyses ChatGPT App and market insight has engaged genuine market players. They have faith in us to offer the data and information they require to make balanced and decisive marketing decisions. Singh, L. Influences of high and low variability on infant word recognition.

Age and understanding speakers with Spanish or Taiwanese accents. Skills 97, 11–20. While the body of work on accent perception carried out in the past 40 years is noteworthy and solid, there are many areas that necessitate further exploration. Our review of the literature also revealed two recurring “beliefs” not mentioned above, but which are worthy of exploration because they permeate the literature. Ultimately, the most relevant evidence to support these “beliefs” is currently lacking, so we address them here in the hope of inspiring the community to revisit them.

Understanding how older adults process accented speech thus sheds light on the factors involved in dealing with such variation in the spoken signal, and could provide us with cues to facilitate communication for older adults. However, natural accents are much more complex than those previously implemented through artificial phonologies; for example, the former typically affect multiple phonological levels. Research is still needed to assess the extent to which learning such artificial phonologies resembles learning real accents. Thus, this work cannot currently replace research investigating the potential benefits of short-term, laboratory-based exposure to a natural accent, which provides valuable evidence. However, how and when exactly this adaptation can be brought about in the lab is not entirely clear. The rich work on accented speech perception that has been carried out on young adults shows that accented speech affects both accuracy and speed of processing.

Indeed, this is the viewpoint commonly adopted when documenting developmental changes in initial processing costs (e.g., Best et al., 2009). Another interpretation is that developmental changes are not tied with an awareness of what kinds of variation are to be ignored, but rather with changes in cognitive flexibility or executive control. For instance, one could postulate that advances in selective attention, memory, and executive control allow toddlers to more readily process accented speech in terms of both linguistic and social dimensions. The role of multiple cognitive and linguistic factors in accent processing and perceptual adaptation is a topic that we revisit in Section “Accent Perception in Late Adulthood”. Children have also been tested on their ability to categorize talkers on the basis of their accents. Girard et al. (2008) presented French-speaking 5- to 6-year-olds with sentences in two accents and instructed them to group the speakers into two sets according to their accent.

27, 623–634. Kinzler, K. D., Corriveau, K. H., and Harris, P. L. Children’s selective trust in native-accented speakers. 14, 106–111.