There is a consensus in psycholinguistic research that listening to unfamiliar speech constitutes a challenging listening situation. In this commentary, we explore the problems with the construct of non-native and ask whether using this construct in research is useful, specifically to shift the communicative burden from the language learner to the perceiver, who often occupies a position of power. We examine what factors affect perception of non-native talkers. We frame this question by addressing the observation that not all “difficult” listening conditions provide equal challenges. Given this, we ask how cognitive and social factors impact perception of unfamiliar accents and ask what our psycholinguistic measurements are capturing. We close by making recommendations for future work. We propose that the issue is less with the terminology of native versus non-native, but rather how our unexamined biases affect the methodological assumptions that we make. We propose that we can use the existing dichotomy to create research programs that focus on teaching perceivers to better understand talkers more generally. Finally, we call on perceivers and researchers alike to question the idea of speech being “native,” “non-native,” “unfamiliar,” and “accented” to better align with reality as opposed to our inherently biased views.

心理语言学研究一致认为，听陌生的语音构成了一种具有挑战性的听力情境。在这篇评论中，我们探讨了非母语建构的问题并询问在研究中使用这种结构是否有用，特别是将交际负担从语言学习者转移到通常占据权力地位的感知者身上。我们研究哪些因素会影响非母语说话者的感知。我们通过解决以下观察来提出这个问题：并非所有“困难”的聆听条件都会带来同样的挑战。鉴于此，我们询问认知和社会因素如何影响对陌生口音的感知，并询问我们的心理语言学测量捕捉到了什么。我们最后对未来的工作提出建议。我们认为，本地与非本地术语的问题较少，而是我们未经检验的偏见如何影响我们做出的方法论假设。我们建议我们可以利用现有的二分法来创建研究项目，重点是教导感知者更好地理解说话者。最后，我们呼吁感知者和研究人员质疑言语是“母语”、“非母语”、“陌生”和“口音”的概念，以更好地符合现实，而不是我们固有的偏见观点。