Foreign-accented sentence comprehension is challenging for older adults: ERP evidence from semantic and grammar processing

Research has shown that older adults have increased difficulty comprehending foreign-accented speech. As these studies only used behavioral measures, we exploited the fine-grained temporal resolution of EEG/ERPs to examine neural signatures foreign- and native-accented sentence comprehension in adults. Older adults, all normal-hearing monolingual English speakers, listened foreign Chinese-accented native English-accented sentences while ERPs were recorded. Foreign- contained semantic or pronoun errors, semantically grammatically correct. We also gathered measures comprehension, examined how activity during processing relates individual differences listeners’ attitudes towards accented linguistic cognitive skills, hearing acuity. showed high accuracy both sentences. In contrast, ERP data different responses sentences: Semantic errors elicited an N400 effect sentences, but not Grammatical a P600, further qualified by accent type. Hearing acuity language attitudes, variables did systematically correlate with patterns. These findings suggest are ultimately engaging non-native pre-lexical speech signals do attain activation needed for strong lexical online processing, resulting strained more effortful higher-level semantics downstream sentence.