Boundaries of adaptation

The human speech system must be flexible and stable at the same time. With too little flexibility we would, for instance, not be able to understand speakers with a foreign accent, because their pronunciation deviates significantly from the canonical form; with too much flexibility categories would be blurred and we would no longer be able to make lexical distinctions that are meaningful. By looking at adaption to different linguistic levels of accent markers we are trying to establish the boundaries of flexibility.

Adaptation across the lifespan

Adaptation is assumed to be guided by lexical knowledge. Young children, however, may not have a large and stable enough mental lexicon yet to allow for lexical guidance; older listeners, on the other hand are faced with a decline in hearing and cognitive abilities which may have consequences for adaptation. In this project we are investigating the (possibly) varying mechanisms for adaptation across the lifespan.

Stability of adaptation

Adaptation to foreign-accented speech can occur within a couple of minutes of listening. But how stable is this adaptation? In this project we investigate adaptation across speakers, across accents, across languages, and across time.