Suzanne van der Feest
City University of New York

Voices of Variation: How Dialects and Speaking Styles Influence Word Recognition in Young Children

Online measures of word recognition such as eyetracking have revolutionized the way we understand phonological processing in young children. However, most work in this area has only tested listeners that are exposed to a single dialect of a single language, in experimental settings using clear speaking styles. In this talk I will discuss two lines of research on the influence of variability on early word recognition. First, we will look at the effect of natural exposure to multiple dialects – with different distributions of phonological contrasts – on toddler’s online word recognition. Contrary to some earlier reports, we find no evidence that exposure to multiple language varieties has long-lasting detrimental effects on toddler’s word recognition efficiency. Second, we will consider children’s interpretation of variability due to different speaking styles (Conversational, Clear, and Infant Directed Speech). Findings show that speech clarity may be even more crucial for reliable word recognition in young children, who rely on bottom-up processing more heavily, compared to adult listeners. Our developing understanding of the impact of real-life variability in the speech signal has implications for our understanding of the development of phonological processing, as well as for clinical and educational settings.