Date of Award

5-2025

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

College/School

College of Humanities and Social Sciences

Department/Program

Psychology

Thesis Sponsor/Dissertation Chair/Project Chair

Jennifer Pardo

Committee Member

Michael Bixter

Committee Member

John Paul Wilson

Abstract

Previous studies have indicated that phonetic convergence, in which a listener’s speech aligns with the speech of a talker they hear, can influence speech perception. The present study replicated and extended these findings by investigating whether phonetic convergence can facilitate speech intelligibility. A total of N = 140 participants, all aged 18 or older and native English speakers, completed a speech shadowing task, a speech intelligibility test, and perceptual similarity tests. This study examined whether individuals better understand their own speech compared to others’, whether shadowing improves speech intelligibility, and whether phonetic convergence is positively related to intelligibility. Results supported the self-speech advantage, with self-produced speech being significantly more intelligible than the speech produced by shadowers or other talkers. However, shadowing did not lead to a significant improvement in intelligibility from baseline to shadowed words, although a slight benefit was observed for shadowers familiar with the model talker’s voice. A negative relationship was observed between phonetic convergence and speech intelligibility, where greater convergence was associated with lower intelligibility. These findings indicate that the role of phonetic convergence may not be directly related to processes that enhance speech intelligibility.

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