Children's comprehension of unfamiliar regional accents: a preliminary investigation

The effect of regional accent on children's processing of speech is a theoretically and practically important aspect of phonological development that has been little researched. 48 children from London, aged four and seven years old, were tested on their ability to repeat and define single words presented in their own accent and in a Glaswegian accent. Results showed that word comprehension was significantly reduced in the Glaswegian condition and that four-year-olds performed less successfully than seven-year-olds. Both groups made similar numbers of lexical misidentifications, but the younger children were more likely to fail to access any word at all. On the repetition task, the younger children showed a different pattern of errors to the older children, their productions being apparently more influenced by the phonetics of the Glaswegian stimuli. It is suggested that such phonetic responses are related to the younger children's failure to map the unfamiliar accent onto their own phonological representations. It is proposed that the lexical misidentifications, common to both age groups, are more likely to be induced by lack of context. The paper concludes with discussion of implications of these findings for our understanding of how children develop the ability to process unfamiliar regional accents.