Stress Typicality Effects in Native and Non-Native Speakers of English

This study investigated the processing of lexical stress in native and non-native speakers of English. Specifically, we examined stress typicality effects (where typicality is defined on the basis of grammatical category) in disyllabic words using two on-line tasks. Our grammatical classification experiment showed an overall effect of stress typicality in non-native speakers but no overall effect in native speakers (although some native speakers with high error rates did show a significant effect). Our onset gating experiment revealed significant stress typicality effects in both groups of speakers. These findings are discussed with reference to previous research.