L2 Phonetic Detail in L1 Lexical Processing
The present dissertation explores how Spanish-English bilinguals process Spanish words with English-like phonetic detail (English-accented Spanish). Previous work shows that mismatched phonetic detail and unfamiliar accents cause delayed and disrupted lexical access during spoken word recognition, but that these effects are gradient and attenuated by factors including the degree of mismatch and listener experience (Andruski et al., 1994; Bent & Bradlow, 2003; Bradlow & Bent, 2008; Floccia et al., 2006; McMurray et al., 2008; Porretta et al., 2016; Sumner, 2011; Sumner & Samuel, 2009; Weber et al., 2011; Witteman et al., 2013). Two experimental paradigms were used to examine to what extent L1 Spanish L2 English listeners would experience lexical processing delays for Spanish words featuring English-like phonetic detail: auditory lexical decision, and lexical decision with cross-modal priming (auditory – visual). Two types of auditory stimuli were used in each task: controlled stimuli with resynthesized VOT (voice onset time) in word onset, and naturally produced English-accented Spanish. L1 Spanish L2 English bilinguals are neither producers nor frequent overhearers of English-accented Spanish, so it was hypothesized that they would show evidence of processing delays for L1 Spanish words featuring unfamiliar L2 (English-like) phonetic detail in both experimental paradigms and with both stimulus types. However, results indicated that L1 Spanish L2 English bilinguals responded differently to L2 phonetic detail in each task. In auditory lexical decision, when attentional demands were low, these listeners were very intolerant of L2 English phonetic detail in L1 Spanish words, as seen in delayed responses and low acceptance rates. In contrast, when attentional demands were elevated in the cross-modal priming task, the same listeners showed no evidence of processing delay or disruption. Instead, L1 Spanish bilinguals were highly tolerant of unfamiliar phonetic variation in both stimulus types, and English-accented Spanish identity primes facilitated responses to visually presented targets as effectively as Spanish-accented primes. This suggests a change in processing strategies in response to task demands, and supports the view that the role of phonetic detail in auditory speech processing is variable: listeners appear to use phonetic detail differently depending on factors related to the listener (i.e. linguistic experience) as well as the task (i.e. attentional demands). These factors appear to modulate the strictness of the similarity criterion used for matching the incoming speech signal to lexical representations during spoken word recognition.
ACCENTED SPEECH PROCESSING, BILINGUALISM, PHONETIC DETAIL, SPOKEN WORD RECOGNITION
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