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Investigating the impact of unfamiliar speaker accent on auditory comprehension in adults with aphasia

Dunton, J; Bruce, C; Newton, C; (2011) Investigating the impact of unfamiliar speaker accent on auditory comprehension in adults with aphasia. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders , 46 (1) 63 - 73. 10.3109/13682820903560294. Green open access

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Abstract

Background: In an increasingly multicultural society, all individuals are likely to come into contact with speakers with unfamiliar accents. Recent figures suggest that such accent variation may be particularly apparent within the healthcare workforce. Research on accent variation has demonstrated that an unfamiliar speaker accent can affect listener comprehension, but the impact of speaker accent on the comprehension skills of listeners with neurological impairment has not been widely explored.Aims: To investigate the effect of an unfamiliar accent on the sentence comprehension of individuals with aphasia following stroke.Methods & Procedures: The impact of two different accents (south-east England and Nigerian) on accuracy and response time for 16 individuals with aphasia and 16 healthy control subjects was measured. Participants were presented with a computerized sentence-to-picture matching task and their accuracy and response times were recorded.Outcomes & Results: Results showed that individuals with aphasia made significantly more errors in comprehension of sentences spoken in an unfamiliar accent than in a familiar accent, a finding that was not demonstrated by the control group when outliers were excluded. Individuals with aphasia were slower overall; however, response times did not show significant effects of speaker accent for either group.Conclusions & Implications: The impact of speaker accent should be considered in the rehabilitation of individuals with aphasia following stroke. Clinical implications include the possibility of underestimating an individual's language abilities on assessment, and the potential errors in comprehension that may occur.

Type: Article
Title: Investigating the impact of unfamiliar speaker accent on auditory comprehension in adults with aphasia
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.3109/13682820903560294
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.3109/13682820903560294
Language: English
Additional information: This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Dunton, J; Bruce, C; Newton, C; (2011) Investigating the impact of unfamiliar speaker accent on auditory comprehension in adults with aphasia. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 46 (1) 63 - 73, which has been published in final form at: http://dx.doi.org/10.3109/13682820903560294. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.
Keywords: aphasia, comprehension, speaker accent, listeners memory, verbal material, speech, perception, english, children, recall, health
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences > Language and Cognition
URI: https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/123445
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