Recognition memory for speech of varying intelligibility

Previous research has demonstrated that the internal representation of spoken words includes both a phonetic description and information about the source characteristics of specific talkers. Spoken utterances also vary greatly in intelligibility. However, relatively little is known about how such variability affects the encoding of speech signals in memory. In the current study, we hypothesize that increased intelligibility leads to better recognition memory for speech. We test this hypothesis by comparing recognition memory for clear and conversational speech produced by native and non-native speakers of English. In experiment 1, listeners were exposed to semantically anomalous sentences produced by a native speaker of English in clear and conversational speech styles. In experiment 2, listeners heard sentences in both styles produced by a Croatian-accented speaker of English. In each experiment, after initial exposure, recognition memory was tested with an old-new identification task. Preliminary result...