Linguistic Processing of Accented Speech Across the Lifespan


Language Translation Device Market Projected To Reach a Revised Size Of USD 3,166 2 Mn By 2032

regional accents present challenges for natural language processing.

46, 1093–1096. Gordon-Salant, S., Yeni-Komshian, G. H., and Fitzgibbons, P. J. (2010b). Recognition of accented English in quiet and noise by younger and older listeners.

You can foun additiona information about ai customer service and artificial intelligence and NLP. With exposure in lab conditions, evidence of adaptation can be found (e.g., Clarke and Garrett, 2004). A lifelong exposure to a variety of accents shapes perceptual abilities so that listeners are able to process each variant equally rapidly (e.g., Sumner and Samuel, 2009), suggesting certain flexibility of the representations or the way the signal is mapped onto them. Finally, processing ease varies with factors that go beyond simple exposure (e.g., Kendall and Fridland, 2012).

Accent Perception in Childhood

Indeed, the mere expectation that speakers will have an accent may hinder listeners’ comprehension. For example, Rubin (1992) found that the same general American “unaccented” speech was understood less accurately when paired with a photograph of an Asian face than when it was paired with a Caucasian face. Nonetheless, individuals in all age groups grapple with accented speech. Therefore, research on accented speech perception makes a unique contribution to our understanding of ecologically valid language processing.

Interestingly, our knowledge of regional accents shapes our perceptual expectations. The shifting of phoneme categorization boundaries seen in these studies reflects adaptation to the incoming speech signal, contingent upon the listener’s knowledge of the patterns of a particular within-language accent. Sadeque holds a PhD from the University of Arizona with research experience in computational linguistics, applied natural language processing and machine learning. Various secondary sources have been referred to in the secondary research process for identifying and collecting information important for this study. The secondary sources include annual reports, press releases, and investor presentations of companies; white papers; journals and certified publications; and articles from recognized authors, websites, directories, and databases. The secondary data has been collected and analyzed to determine the overall market size, further validated by primary research.

Southern Vowel Shift. J. Phon. 40, 289–306. Janse, E. Processing of fast speech by elderly listeners.

regional accents present challenges for natural language processing.

Aging 11, 233–341. Rubin, D. L. Nonlanguage factors affecting undergraduates’ judgments of non-native English speaking teaching assistants. Higher Educ. 33, 511–531.

A significant trend in the text-to-speech market involves the expected upsurge in demand fueled by progress in digital content development, the prevalent use of handheld devices, and the expanding reach of internet connectivity. Thus, results reviewed largely coincide with the picture found in young adults, in that there are initial processing costs when a novel accent is encountered, which are diminished through brief exposure. However, results in infants and young adults do not align with respect to long-term exposure to multiple accents. In adults, a lifetime of exposure to an accent provides listeners with the ability to access the same lexical items through both varietal forms; for example, Sumner and Samuel (2009) document priming across regional variants. This brief overview of accent perception research in young adults has allowed us to identify a few key findings, which will be carried over in our review of the developing and older populations. Accented speech initially perturbs word recognition and/or sentence processing in terms of accuracy (e.g., Gass and Varonis, 1984) and speed of processing (e.g., Floccia et al., 2006).

19, 309–328. Mullenix, J. W., and Pisoni, D. B. Stimulus variability and processing dependencies in speech perception. Psychophys. 47, 379–390.

In stark contrast, 5-year-olds showed no such recalibration. Accent perception during childhood is less well-documented than accent perception in early infancy or in adulthood, possibly because the focus of many studies with children has been on production. Accent production research in children suggests an outstanding ability to acquire a new accent (e.g., Tagliamonte and Molfenter, 2007), which very likely suggests an excellent perceptual flexibility for accent variations. Some work argues that foreign accent in caregivers is ignored (in order to acquire the local native accent; Chambers, 2002). One line of research within perception has thus studied potential differences in the detection of native and foreign accents.

As for adaptation, it is clear that individuals of all ages can learn to adapt to new accents. All percentage shares, splits, and breakdowns have been determined using secondary sources and verified through primary sources. All the parameters affecting the markets covered in this research study have been accounted for, viewed in detail, verified through primary research, and analyzed to obtain the final quantitative and qualitative data. This data has been consolidated and supplemented with detailed inputs and analysis from MarketsandMarkets and presented in this report. The following figure represents this study’s overall market size estimation process.

Market Size Estimation

During childhood, the ability to retrieve meaning from accented speech improves with age (Nathan et al., 1998). Short-term exposure to an accent with a single sound change guided by visual or lexical information clearly shapes children’s perception, although there may be developmental changes in the ability to profit from bootstrapping information (van Linden and Vroomen, 2008). Surprisingly, no work has assessed the effects of long-term exposure to an accent in childhood, although clearly this must matter in view of effects on production (Tagliamonte and Molfenter, 2007). It is unclear whether similar mechanisms are used by children and young adults, or whether adaptation strategies vary with cognitive and linguistic development. This seems an unfortunate state of affairs.

regional accents present challenges for natural language processing.

Res. 55, 554–560. Tagliamonte, S. A., and Molfenter, S. How’d you get that accent? Acquiring a second dialect of the same language. 36, 649–675.

Additionally, the region’s focus on technological innovation, coupled with a tech-savvy consumer base, positions North America at the forefront of Text-to-Speech market leadership. The Asia Pacific region is witnessing the highest CAGR in the Text-to-Speech industry, propelled by several factors. The region is undergoing rapid technological advancements and digital transformation, with a burgeoning population of tech-savvy consumers. The increasing adoption of smartphones, rising internet penetration, and a growing demand for voice-enabled applications in diverse industries contribute to the heightened growth. Additionally, the linguistic diversity across Asia Pacific necessitates versatile Text-to-Speech solutions, catering to a wide array of languages and dialects.

128, 444–455. (2010a). Recognition of accented English in quiet by younger normal-hearing listeners and older listeners with normal-hearing and hearing loss. Golomb, J. D., Peelle, J. E., and Wingfield, A. Effects of stimulus variability and adult aging on adaptation to time-compressed speech.

Infancy 15, 650–662. Rogers, C. L., Dalby, J., and Nishi, K. Effects of noise and proficiency level on intelligibility of Chinese-accented English. Speech 47, 139–154. Niedzielski, N. The effect of social information on the perception of sociolinguistic variables.

  • However, GA English speakers did not show semantic priming for NYC English primes (“slenda” does not prime “thin”), suggesting that experience with the dialect is necessary for a dialect form to facilitate processing.
  • For example, one may argue that it should be more difficult to tease apart Spanish from Catalan, which are very similar at the phonological level, than native English from a heavily French-accented English, since French differs from English even at the rhythmic level.
  • Thus, no effort was made to train toddlers on the host of phonetic changes imposed by a natural Spanish accent.

Successfully addressing this challenge not only enhances the quality of Text-to-Speech offerings but also ensures their relevance and effectiveness in a global context, where linguistic diversity is a fundamental aspect of human communication. An exciting prospect for the Text-to-Speech market lies in the increasing integration of TTS technology into autonomous vehicles. With the automotive industry progressing towards autonomous and connected vehicles, there is a growing demand for sophisticated voice interfaces that can enhance user experience and safety.

Surprisingly, only 38% of surveyed journalists believe AI poses a threat to their job security. Instead, they are more concerned about other risks, such as misinformation (85%), plagiarism or copyright infringement (67%) and data security (46%). First and foremost, AI can enable real-time transcription, automating the conversion of audio to text. This advancement eliminates the need for manual transcription, saving journalists hours of tedious work and allowing them to focus on more critical aspects of their reporting.

Predicting foreign-accent adaptation in older adults. 65, 1563–1585. Houston, D. M., Jusczyk, P. W., Kuijpers, C., Coolen, R., regional accents present challenges for natural language processing. and Cutler, A. Both Dutch- and English-learning 9-month-olds segment Dutch words from fluent speech. Psychon. Rev. 7, 504–509.

Necessarily, having a distorted or smaller signal could have a much greater impact in infancy and childhood, and interact in more complex ways with cognitive skills than it does in older adults. Additionally, future work should examine special populations, such as autistic spectrum disorders (ASDs), Williams Syndrome, and Specific Language Impairment (SLI). This work could shed unique light on the influence of certain social, cognitive, and linguistic factors on accented speech perception, in addition to making steps toward the study of speech perception by all language users, and not only normative ones.

Brunellière, A., Dufour, S., Nguyen, N., and Frauenfelder, U. H. Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence for the impact of regional variation on phoneme perception. Cognition 111, 390–396. In addition to NLP and NLU, technologies like computer vision, predictive analytics, and affective computing are enhancing AI’s ability to perceive human emotions.

This review reveals some points of convergence of research on accent perception across the lifespan. Throughout the lifespan, online measures have provided evidence that an accent can initially impair linguistic processing, but further experience allows for rapid adaptation. Admittedly, obtaining a full picture of the development of accented speech perception from infancy to adulthood is impossible at present, especially given the major methodological and theoretical differences that exist across research with infants, children, and adults. In this quest, it will be necessary to develop appropriately controlled stimuli, and to establish which behavioral and brain measures are comparable across populations. Ultimately, it would benefit researchers to employ comparable tasks that can be implemented across the lifespan. This type of methodological innovation would allow researchers to more reliably identify specific developmental changes in accent perception.

Processing Foreign and Within-Language Accents is Fundamentally Different

22, 171–185. Adank, P., and Janse, E. Comprehension of a novel accent by young and older listeners. Aging 25, 736–740. In India alone, the AI market is projected to soar to USD 17 billion by 2027, growing at an annual rate of 25–35%. However, this journey has its fair share of roadblocks.

The effect of familiarity on the comprehensibility of nonnative speech. 34, 66–85. The perception of phonemic contrasts in a non-native dialect. 121, EL131–EL136. Clopper, C. G., and Bradlow, A. Perception of dialect variation in noise intelligibility and classification.

Linguistic Processing of Accented Speech Across the Lifespan – Frontiers

Linguistic Processing of Accented Speech Across the Lifespan.

Posted: Tue, 06 Feb 2024 18:26:27 GMT [source]

The text-to-speech market is experiencing growth driven by the rising need for AI-based tools, natural language processing, and the widespread adoption of advanced electronic devices. However, challenges surrounding clear pronunciation and voice modification are impeding market advancement. Despite these hurdles, opportunities emerge from the increasing demand for mobile devices, augmented government spending on education for differently-abled students, and the growing population facing diverse learning difficulties.

18, 62–85. Munro, M. J., Derwing, T. M., and Burgess, C. S. Detection ChatGPT App of nonnative speaker status from content-masked speech.

Speech Commun. 52, 626–637. Luce, P. A., and Lyons, E. A. Specificity of memory representations for spoken words.

This entire procedure includes the study of annual and financial reports of the top market players and extensive interviews for key insights (quantitative and qualitative) with industry experts (CEOs, VPs, directors, and marketing executives). Munro, M. J., and Derwing, T. G. Processing time, accent and comprehensibility in the perception of native and foreign-accented speech. Speech 38, 289–306. Mullennix, J. W., Pisoni, D. B., and Martin, C. S.

regional accents present challenges for natural language processing.

Unfortunately, such powerful AI models are still relatively scarce in Bangladesh, requiring significant investment. Moreover, the lack of skilled machine learning engineers in the country further hinders the development of complex AI products. The recent rise of AI is largely due to the Transformer Model – a neural network that learns context and meaning by analysing sequential data, such as sentences. High-performance computers are vital for designing and processing these advanced models. The need for advanced communication tools, customer engagement platforms, and interactive applications in sectors such as customer service, e-learning, and entertainment drives the demand for high-quality Text-to-Speech solutions.

Challenge: Creating a comprehensive acoustic database for Text-to-Speech

In terms of the mechanisms recruited, lexical feedback is clearly the main source of information that learners have been assumed to use, and the focus of attention has been on single segmental changes. However, infants can adapt to new accents when they are too young to have a large lexicon; and they can do so without a disambiguating lexical context. These facts should inspire adult researchers to consider other aspects of accent processing. We predict that accent adaptation, particularly in infancy, can be triggered by suprasegmental deviations. The presence of such deviations would invite listeners to employ processing schemes that are robust in the face of uncertainty; for example, they should allow less strict acoustic matching and combine more cues for segmentation. In contrast, it is to be expected that lexical factors play an increasingly large role throughout toddlerhood and later childhood, as lexical growth allows listeners to detect accents through mismatches between the original and expected lexical forms.

Zero Touch Claims – How P&C insurers can optimize claims processing using AWS AI/ML services – AWS Blog

Zero Touch Claims – How P&C insurers can optimize claims processing using AWS AI/ML services.

Posted: Thu, 16 Jun 2022 07:00:00 GMT [source]

Over this backdrop, the contribution of the present article relied on the comparison of research carried out at different points of the lifespan. This comparison both uncovered the aspects of linguistic processing that are common to all human perceivers and underlined which aspects can vary across individuals and populations. The second set of roadblocks can be argued to relate to theoretical factors. First, it is likely impossible, and arguably unnatural, to design tasks which isolate a single dimension of interest, such as the effect of linguistic deviations while controlling for social and cognitive effects.

Kraljic, T., and Samuel, A. G. Perceptual adjustments to multiple speakers. 56, 1–15. Kalikow, D. N., Stevens, K. N., and Elliott, L. L. ChatGPT Development of a test of speech intelligibility in noise using sentence materials with controlled word predictability. 61, 1337–1351.

  • “The effect of an unfamiliar regional accent on the speed of word processing,” in Proceedings of the XVIth International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Saarbrücken, 1925–1928.
  • Although only a handful of studies have been carried out with older adults, it is clear that this population experiences an initial cost when processing accented speech, which may be rendered smaller through exposure.
  • For example, it may be that young infants have a difficult time processing unfamiliar variants, and thus implicitly dislike the non-native variant (this is a possibility that we discuss in greater detail in See Concluding Remarks).
  • Kalikow, D. N., Stevens, K. N., and Elliott, L. L.

It was captured how the facial expression changes while pronouncing a specific sound, where the presenter pauses or takes a break. This data is then used to create an AI video avatar, capable of pronouncing any words like the original presenter. According to Murphy, it took about a day to do a video shoot and about three to four weeks of machine learning time on the computers to generate the first AI model. AI started as a news presenter in 2018 with China’s Xinhua Agency. According to The Guardian, the AI presenter was modelled after Xinhua Agency presenter Qiu Hao by processing facial and voice data using machine learning. Goslin, J., Duffy, H., and Floccia, C.

An ERP investigation of regional and foreign accent processing. Brain Lang. 122, 92–102. Ferguson, S. H., Jongman, A., Sereno, J. A., and Keum, K. A.

Computer vision allows machines to accurately identify emotions from visual cues such as facial expressions and body language, thereby improving human-machine interaction. Predictive analytics refines emotional intelligence by analyzing vast datasets to detect key emotions and patterns, providing actionable insights for businesses. Affective computing further bridges the gap between humans and machines by infusing emotional intelligence into AI systems. Ever wondered how ChatGPT, Gemini, Alexa, or customer care chatbots seamlessly comprehend user prompts and respond with precision?

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