Influence of the speaker's accent on immediate information recall from spoken utterances

This thesis examines the influence of a speaker's foreign accent on the immediate recall of information from spoken utterances in Czech. It is based on psycholinguistic research focused on spoken language processing, working memory, and the perception of foreign accents, and builds on studies that show systematic differences in recall of different types of information from sentences. The aim of the thesis is to verify whether the foreign accent of the speaker affects the immediate availability of information in the listener's memory, especially optional information such as locative and temporal adjuncts The theoretical part summarizes findings on spoken language processing, the role of working memory, and cognitive processes associated with understanding foreign-accented speech. It also addresses differences in the success of recalling different types of information from sentence structure. The empirical part of the thesis is based on the author's own research, which tested the immediate recall of information from Czech sentences in spoken form with a native and a Polish foreign accent. The results show that differences in recall between core and optional information are also evident when listening to spoken language and that the presence of a foreign accent leads to poorer performance in recalling...