In large urban cities, children typically grow-up in a
diverse multicultural environment. Depending on
their local language environment, children are often
exposed to regional as well as foreign-accents. This
study investigated whether children’s accent
processing is affected by the variability in their
ambient language environment.
English monolingual and Sylheti-English
bilingual children were assessed on their ability to
identify sentences in three accent conditions:
London-English (familiar to all), Sylheti-accented
English (only familiar to the bilinguals), Spanishaccented English (unfamiliar to all). All children were
most accurate in the London-English accent
condition, however the groups differed with their
dominant familiar accent: the monolinguals were
more accurate at recalling the London-English
sentences than the bilinguals, and the bilinguals were
more accurate in the Sylheti-accented condition than
the monolinguals.
The results suggest that variation in linguistic
experience in early life, give rise to differences in the
processing of familiar and unfamiliar accented
speech
