ABSTRACT
This paper considers the impact of workload on the production of speech in one’s first (L1) or second (L2) language. There are two reasons why such a study is of interest to the Human Factors community. First, there are many applications in which multi-national cooperation requires people to communicate in languages which are not their first. Often (but not always) this second language is English. It is plausible to assume that communication errors might arise, particularly when the speaker is placed under conditions of stress or workload; they might know a particular word in their first language but might struggle to recall the correct translation. Second, while there are continued developments of speech recognisers for a variety of languages, many systems are designed to work with English and people speaking English as a second language might have problems in terms of pronunciation. Such problems could be exacerbated when the speakers are placed under stress.
