As listeners, we constantly grapple with factors that make spoken language harder to understand. Background noise, unknown words, and regional accents are all common sources of language variation that require different adaptive mechanisms in response. My research focuses on how listeners navigate multiple types of unfamiliar language to derive meaning. I am especially interested in how behavioral and neural responses change over time as listeners adapt: learning the meanings of new words and becoming familiar with accented speech. I work with Matt Davis to answer these questions using a mixture of behavioral, MEG, and EEG methods.