Effects of dialect familiarity and dialect exposure on cross-dialectlexical processing

Dialect exposure has been shown to affect lexical processing, including faster and more accurate processing of familiar dialects than unfamiliar dialects. In addition, listeners with lifetime exposure to multiple dialects (i.e., multi-dialectal listeners) exhibit a more flexible processing strategy than listeners with lifetime exposure to a single dialect (i.e., mono-dialectal listeners), such that multi-dialectal listeners delay choosing among potential word candidates to allow them to resolve dialect-specific phonological ambiguity. The goal of the current study was to explore how dialect familiarity and multiple-dialect exposure interact in lexical processing. Mono- and multi-dialectal listeners in the Midland and Southern U.S. dialect regions participated in a cross-modal lexical decision task with auditory primes produced by General and Southern American English talkers. The prime-target pairs were selected to be phonologically ambiguous across the two stimulus dialects. Responses were faster overall for matching prime-target pairs (e.g., side, side) than unrelated pairs (e.g., side, pet), consistent with form-priming facilitation, and slower overall for competing prime-target pairs (e.g., side, sod) than unrelated pairs, consistent with minimal pair inhibition. The results suggest that whereas specific dialect familiarity is the primary predictor of facilitation, overall dialect exposure is the primary predictor of inhibition.