Both native and non-native disfluencies trigger listeners’ attention

Disfluencies, such as uh and uhm, are known to help
the listener in speech comprehension. For instance,
disfluencies may elicit prediction of less accessible
referents and may trigger listeners’ attention to
the following word. However, recent work suggests
differential processing of disfluencies in native and
non-native speech. The current study investigated
whether the beneficial effects of disfluencies on listeners’
attention are modulated by the (non-)native
identity of the speaker. Using the Change Detection
Paradigm, we investigated listeners’ recall accuracy
for words presented in disfluent and fluent contexts,
in native and non-native speech. We observed beneficial
effects of both native and non-native disfluencies
on listeners’ recall accuracy, suggesting that
native and non-native disfluencies trigger listeners’
attention in a similar fashion.