Silent pauses are a natural part of speech production and have consequences for speech perception. However, studies have shown mixed results regarding whether listeners process pauses in native and non-native speech similarly or differently. A possible explanation for these mixed results is that perceptual consequences of pauses differ depending on the type of processing that listeners engage in: a focus on the content/meaning of the speech versus style/form of the speech. Thus, the present study examines the effect of silent pauses of listeners’ perception of native and non-native speech in two different tasks: the perceived credibility and the perceived fluency of the speech. Specifically, we ask whether characteristics of silent pauses influence listeners’ perception differently for native versus non-native speech, and whether this pattern differs when listeners are rating the credibility versus the fluency of the speech. We find that while native speakers are rated as more fluent than non-native speakers, there is no evidence that native speakers are rated as more credible. Our findings suggest that the way a non-native accent and disfluency together impact speech perception differs depending on the type of processing that listeners are engaged in when listening to the speech.

无声停顿是语音产生的自然部分，会对语音感知产生影响。然而，关于听众对母语和非母语语音中的停顿的处理是否相似或不同，研究显示了不同的结果。对这些混合结果的一个可能的解释是，停顿的感知后果根据听众参与的处理类型而有所不同：关注演讲的内容/含义与演讲的风格/形式。因此，本研究在两个不同的任务中检验了无声停顿对听众对母语和非母语语音的感知的影响：感知的可信度和感知的语音流畅性。具体来说，我们询问无声停顿的特征是否对听众对母语和非母语语音的感知产生不同的影响，以及当听众对语音的可信度和流畅度进行评分时，这种模式是否有所不同。我们发现，虽然母语人士被认为比非母语人士更流利，但没有证据表明母语人士被认为更可信。我们的研究结果表明，非母语口音和不流畅共同影响语音感知的方式有所不同，具体取决于听众在收听语音时进行的处理类型。