Abstract

Unfamiliar accents can make speech communication difficult, both by reducing speech intelligibility and by increasing the effort listeners must put forth to understand speech. However, these two constructs, while related, are independent: for example, two 100% intelligible utterances may require different amounts of effort to accurately process. To better characterize the relationship between intelligibility and effort, this study presents speakers of four intelligibility levels (one natively-accented English speaker, and three Mandarin-accented English speakers) within a dual-task paradigm (featuring a vibrotactile secondary task) to measure listening effort. We found a negative nonlinear relationship between intelligibility and effort, with the steepest slope between the native speaker and the highly intelligible Mandarin-accented speaker, and the shallowest slope between the two least intelligible Mandarin-accented speakers. These results suggest a local plateau in effort that arises relatively soon after intelligibility begins falling.

Committee Chair

Kristin Van Engen

Committee Members

Julie Bugg, Mitchell Sommers

Degree

Master of Arts (AM/MA)

Author's Department

Psychology

Author's School

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Document Type

Thesis

Date of Award

Winter 12-21-2023

Language

English (en)

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Psychology Commons

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