Does Musical Experience Facilitate Phonetic Accommodation During Human–Robot Interaction?

The findings reflect individuals' assessment of the robot's speech characteristics and their efforts to enhance communication efficiency, which might indicate a special speech register used for addressing the robot. The finding is more noticeable in the musician group compared to the nonmusician group. We proposed two possible explanations of the effect of musical training on phonetic accommodations: one involves the training of auditory attention and working memory and the other relates to the refinement of phonetic talent in L2 acquisition, contributing to theories on the relationship between music and language. This study also has implications for applying musical training to speech communication training in clinical populations and for designing social robots to better serve as speech therapy partners.