These results suggest that perceptual strategies are shaped by the reliability of encoding at early stages of the auditory system. 🧵5/5

We find that neural tracking of pitch is linked to pitch cue weighting during word emphasis and lexical stress perception. Specifically, higher pitch weighting is linked to increased tracking of pitch at early latencies within the neural response, from 15 to 55 ms. 🧵4/5

Here, we tested the hypothesis that the reliability of early auditory encoding of a given dimension is linked to the weighting placed on that dimension during speech categorization. We tested this in 60 first language speakers of Mandarin learning English as a second language. 🧵3/5

Linguistic categories are conveyed in speech by many acoustic cues at the same time, but not all of them are equally important. There are clear and replicable individual differences in how people use those cues during speech perception, but the underlying mechanisms are unclear. 🧵2/5

Together, these results suggest that the precision with which people perceive and remember sound patterns plays a major role in how well they understand accented speech, and that auditory training may help listeners who struggle. 🧵5/5

Native English speakers who were better at understanding the accent were also better at detecting pitch differences, remembering sound patterns, and attending to pitch. Musical training also helped. Better speech perception was also linked to stronger neural encoding of speech harmonics. 🧵4/5

In this study, we asked L1 English speakers to listen to the prosody of Mandarin-accented English. We found that some listeners are better at understanding accented speech than others. 🧵3/5

Non-native speakers of English speak with varying degrees of accent. So far, research has focused more on factors that help learners communicate more effectively. But what about the listeners? Are there factors that make it easier for native listeners to understand accented speech? 🧵2/5

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