It's called accommodation, and it is the practice of adapting one's speech – either consciously or unconsciously – depending on whom one is speaking with.
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Linguists call this phenomenon “linguistic convergence,” and it's something you've likely done at some point, even if the shifts were so subtle you didn't notice.
That's because we're all kind of naturally wired to pick up new accents—in part because it will make us easier to understand, and in part because we psychologically mimic people around us in something called the Chameleon Effect. There are two things you can do to prevent unintentional “accent drift”: Stay connected.
In fact, psychologists believe it signals high levels of empathy, and a 2013 study found that this kind of unconscious imitation actually tends to make conversational partners feel more positively about the speaker. Of course, we shouldn't go around deliberately imitating people's accents.
Research has shown that accents become permanent around the age of 12 years old. That being said, it is possible for accents to change over time or for adults to develop a subtle accent after living in a foreign country for an extended period of time.
Some people with ADHD use echolalia as a stimming behavior to self-stimulate or self-soothe. Treatment for echolalia involves helping the person to expand on their language skills to communicate in more diverse and direct ways, and is typically administered by a speech therapist.
Dysprosody refers to speech that has an atypical or absent rhythm, intonation, melody, or start/stop pattern. When people without aphasia speak, their connected speech has prosody. Prosody includes: A fluid rhythm. Variations in intonation (help convey meaning and mood)
According to a 2010 study by a research group at the University of California, Riverside, people subconsciously mimic other accents due to a phenomenon called "the chameleon effect". The chameleon effect describes our human instinct to “empathise and affiliate” with other people.
They will often change their accent to suit their situation or copy the accent of the person they are talking to. They engage in a great deal of talking to themselves–self-talk. This is an effort to sort out emotionally cognitive puzzles and experience. Some children will often speak like adults, another reversal.
It isn't polite to mimic the accent of your audience. It's offensive and people will think you're making fun of them or talking down to them. Often people from other parts of the country discount Southerners because of their accents and think they are slow on the uptake.
My rule of thumb, based on the observation of many foreign-born people living in Australia, is that someone who comes to the country in or before the early primary school years will have a natural Australian accent; if they come after that but before the middle high-school years, they will sound Australian with some ...
Researchers at The University of California, Riverside, found we also imitate speech patters and inflections. That is we have the capacity to imitate accents. The theory behind The Chameleon Effect is that we do it to build rapport and empathy. The better you are at building empathy the more likely you are to mimic.
Accents are a fluid feature of speech. If someone moves from Australia to the US to work, for example, they will probably at least modify their accent, either consciously or unconsciously. This may be out of a need or desire to be more clearly understood and to be accepted in a new community.
Masking can take on many forms
Suppressing stimming behaviors. Mimicking or copying accents (usually unintentionally) Scripting conversations. Avoiding talking about special interests.
Sometimes you might need to understand someone better so you simulate their speech. Sometimes you might need to form a bond with someone so you imitate them in some way. Sometimes you might need someone to view you as authoritative so you retain your own way of speaking instead of shifting.
Children with ASD often have a speech and language disorder. There have been no recorded cases of children speaking with a foreign accent that they have not been exposed to. We present 3 British children with Asperger's syndrome who speak with an American sounding accent with no prior exposure to it.
Atypical speech patterns in ASD
Recognizing that autistic individuals may speak in an atypical manner is very important. A child with asperger's (which is no longer used as an official diagnostic term) may possess an impressive vocabulary, but they may speak in a flat tone which sounds almost robotic.
Since dysprosody is the rarest neurological speech disorder discovered, not much is conclusively known or understood about the disorder. The most obvious expression of dysprosody is when a person starts speaking in an accent which is not their own.
Apraxia of speech (AOS)—also known as acquired apraxia of speech, verbal apraxia, or childhood apraxia of speech (CAS) when diagnosed in children—is a speech sound disorder. Someone with AOS has trouble saying what he or she wants to say correctly and consistently.
Imagine you wake up and how you pronounce words suddenly sounds completely different, almost foreign, from the last time you spoke. For example, your American English accent sounds British. This might seem bizarre, but it's a rare motor speech disorder aptly called foreign accent syndrome (FAS).
Differences in the quality and fluency of speech are also often seen in people with ADHD. In some cases, this disorder has been detected and diagnosed as a result of these differences. As an individual with ADHD works to organize their thoughts when talking, using more filler words or repeating sounds/words is common.
Masking is when a person with ADHD acts in a “socially acceptable” way to fit in and form better connections with those around them. This usually involves camouflaging their symptoms by controlling their impulses, rehearsing responses, and copying the behaviors of those who don't have ADHD.
They may find it challenging to follow along during long conversations or classroom lectures. The sensory sensitivities associated with ADHD may also play a role. Some research suggests that people with ADHD are especially sensitive to sounds. This sensitivity, combined with impulsivity, may lead to echolalia.
In this case, the interaction with an interlocutor can certainly affect how we speak. It might feel like we are adjusting to their accent, but really, we are imitating or mimicking their accent. Did I know this phenomenon was called the chameleon effect?