Vowel perception by listeners from different English dialects

Native English listeners from North America rely primarily on changes in formants, not vowel duration, when perceiving the vowel contrast in the minimal pair bit and beat manipulated from a Canadian English sample [5]. In this paper, we evaluated which cue do native English listeners from other regions use when perceiving the same North American vowel contrast. For this purpose, we used the same task and stimuli as in the study with North American listeners. Our results indicate that listeners from the UK, New Zealand, Ireland and Singapore used primarily changes in formants, a pattern similar to listeners from North America. Australian listeners, however, relied primarily on vowel duration rather than formants. The reaction time results suggest that the difference between Australian listeners and other listeners may be due to differences in the characteristics of vowels in Australian English versus North American English.