Foreign accents can vary considerably in the degree to which they deviate from the listener's native accent, but little is known about how the relationship between a speaker's accent and a listener's native language phonology mediates adaptation. Using an artificial accent methodology, we addressed this issue by constructing a set of three…

Infants struggle to understand familiar words spoken in unfamiliar accents. Here, we examine whether accent exposure facilitates accent-specific adaptation. Two types of pre-exposure were examined: video-based (i.e., listening to pre-recorded stories; Experiment 1) and live interaction (reading books with an experimenter; Experiments 2 and 3).…

The objectives of this study are (a) to determine if native speakers of Canadian French at different English proficiencies can use primary stress for recognizing English words and (b) to specify how the second language (L2) learners' (surface-level) knowledge of L2 stress placement influences their use of primary stress in L2 word recognition. Two…