| At least 10.4 percent of the current U.S. population is foreign-born (U.S. Census Bureau, 2001). Of those who immigrated after puberty, many are likely to speak accented English (Patkowski, 1990). Although listeners of every age complain about difficulty understanding accented English (AE), only two studies to date have explored the ability to understand AE as it relates to normal aging (Burda, 2000; Shah, Schmidt, Goral, and Obler, submitted). While Burda reports that older adults have difficulty repeating AE sentences compared to younger adults, Shah et al. report older adults do not have significantly more difficulty understanding accented speech than younger adults. In view of research suggesting older adults have disproportionate difficulty, relative to younger adults, recognizing distorted speech compared to standard speech (e.g. Bergman, 1980; Gordon-Salant and Fitzgibbons, 1995) one might predict that older adults would have even more difficulty with recognition of AE than recognition of Standard American English (SAE).; Forty-four participants completed this study. Ages ranged from 20--81 years. Correlations of confidence ratings with performance and age were computed. Findings indicate older adults have more difficulty than younger adults in ability to repeat words and sentences in AE, but the data distribution did not permit determining whether the poorer performance of participants over age 70 was disproportionately more problematic than in SAE. Lastly, older adults did not demonstrate less confidence than younger adults in their ability to recognize accented speech. Correlations between confidence in ability to recognize accented-contextual speech and performance on contextual sentences suggest that older adults can be realistic judges of their ability to recognize sentences with contextual cues. |
