230 Gitte Kristiansen
The location of the four accents is shown on the map in Figure 1. The
map was distributed to the listeners together with the response forms and
the questionnaire.
Figure 1. Map of Spain showing location of Autonomous Communities. The Ca-
narian Islands are southwest with respect to the peninsula, off the west
coast of Africa
A total of 150 children distributed across 3 age groups participated as lis-
teners: 50 children born in 2000 (aged 6-7 in spring 2007 when the experi-
ment took place), 50 born in 1998 (aged 8-9) and 50 born in 1994 (aged 12-
13). The test subjects lived in a municipality approximately 30 kilometers
from metropolitan Madrid, attended local schools in the area and most of
them had been born and raised in the municipality.
The speech fragments to which the children were exposed were based
on a short text read in Standard Spanish so that the levels of syntax, lexis
and morphology were held constant. In turn, the fragment was highly cued
for variation at the level of phonetics (e.g. by incorporating lots of instances
of /s/, /r/ and /Ɵ/ in initial, checked and final position) and intonation (e.g.
by including a variety of different mood structures which in Spanish ac-
cents trigger different intonation patterns). The fragment simulated an in-