Neural and behavioral measures of communication across accents
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Communication in a global language like English provides historically unparalleled opportunities for connection between speakers of different language backgrounds, but differences in accent can drive phonologically based misunderstandings and cue social distance and stereotypes. Past work suggests that in conjunction with this behavioral friction, differences exist in neural responses to speech in a listener's own accent and a different accent, though there has been variation in findings across studies. This dissertation seeks to replicate previous findings of differences in neural responses between accents and identify sources of those differences, focusing on phonetic and social factors as candidates. To that end, we conducted EEG recordings while 49 monolingual native speakers of American English listened to semantically congruent and incongruent sentences produced by speakers of American and Indian accents. Each chapter of this dissertation examines a subset of the data collected in this combined paradigm. The first experimental chapter identifies robust differences between accents in neural responses to semantic incongruence, in particular a greater distributed N400 and posterior P600 in the American accent than the Indian accent, and it also identifies that both analytical parameters and study design variables are likely responsible for variation across previous studies. The second experimental chapter finds that differences in neural responses to speech across accents can be driven by differences between accents in realization of particular speech sounds. The third experimental chapter provides evidence that differences in neural responses to accents correlate with social distance to an out-group speaker and that these differences can be attenuated by a perspective-taking intervention intended to reduce intergroup bias. Taken together, these findings suggest that both phonetic and social factors drive differences in neural responses to accent, but that these differences are relatively malleable.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic resource; remote; computer; online resource |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Place | California |
| Place | [Stanford, California] |
| Publisher | [Stanford University] |
| Copyright date | 2019; ©2019 |
| Publication date | 2019; 2019 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Strauber, Charles Benjamin |
|---|---|
| Degree supervisor | McCandliss, Bruce |
| Thesis advisor | McCandliss, Bruce |
| Thesis advisor | Cohen, Geoffrey |
| Thesis advisor | Fujioka, Takako |
| Thesis advisor | Thille, Candace |
| Degree committee member | Cohen, Geoffrey |
| Degree committee member | Fujioka, Takako |
| Degree committee member | Thille, Candace |
| Associated with | Stanford University, Neurosciences Program. |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|---|
| Genre | Text |
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Charles Benjamin Strauber. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Neurosciences Program. |
| Thesis | Thesis Ph.D. Stanford University 2019. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2019 by Charles Benjamin Strauber
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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