When One Person's Mistake Is Another's Standard Usage: The Effect of Foreign Accent on Syntactic Processing.

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Bibliographic Details
Title:	When One Person's Mistake Is Another's Standard Usage: The Effect of Foreign Accent on Syntactic Processing.
Authors:	Hanulíková, Adriana^1,2 Adriana.Hanulikova@mpi.nl, van Alphen, Petra M.¹, van Goch, Merel M.³, Weber, Andrea^1,4
Source:	Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. Apr2012, Vol. 24 Issue 4, p878-887. 10p. 1 Chart, 3 Graphs.
Subjects:	Comparative semantics, Accents (Sociolinguistics), Scientific observation, Speech processing systems, Neuropsychology, Comparative studies
Abstract:	How do native listeners process grammatical errors that are frequent in non-native speech? We investigated whether the neural correlates of syntactic processing are modulated by speaker identity. ERPs to gender agreement errors in sentences spoken by a native speaker were compared with the same errors spoken by a non-native speaker. In line with previous research, gender violations in native speech resulted in a P600 effect (larger P600 for violations in comparison with correct sentences), but when the same violations were produced by the non-native speaker with a foreign accent, no P600 effect was observed. Control sentences with semantic violations elicited comparable N400 effects for both the native and the non-native speaker, confirming no general integration problem in foreign-accented speech. The results demonstrate that the P600 is modulated by speaker identity, extending our knowledge about the role of speaker's characteristics on neural correlates of speech processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
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Database:	Engineering Source

Description
Abstract:	How do native listeners process grammatical errors that are frequent in non-native speech? We investigated whether the neural correlates of syntactic processing are modulated by speaker identity. ERPs to gender agreement errors in sentences spoken by a native speaker were compared with the same errors spoken by a non-native speaker. In line with previous research, gender violations in native speech resulted in a P600 effect (larger P600 for violations in comparison with correct sentences), but when the same violations were produced by the non-native speaker with a foreign accent, no P600 effect was observed. Control sentences with semantic violations elicited comparable N400 effects for both the native and the non-native speaker, confirming no general integration problem in foreign-accented speech. The results demonstrate that the P600 is modulated by speaker identity, extending our knowledge about the role of speaker's characteristics on neural correlates of speech processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
ISSN:	0898929X