Examining talker effects in the perception of nativeand foreign-accented speech

Understanding the circumstances under which talker (and other types of) variability affects language perception represents an important area of research in the field of spoken word recognition. Previous work demonstrates that talker effects are more likely when the processing is relatively slow (McLennan & Luce, 2005). Given that listeners may take longer to process foreign-accented speech than native-accented speech (Munro & Derwing, 1995), talker effects should be more likely when listeners are presented with words spoken in a foreign accent than when listeners are presented with those same words spoken in a native accent. The results of two experiments, conducted in two different countries and in two different languages, are consistent with this prediction