Journal article
Does race impact speech perception? An account of accented speech in two different multilingual locales
Cognitive research: principles and implications, Vol.7(1), pp.7-7
01/28/2022
DOI: 10.1186/s41235-022-00354-0
PMCID: PMC8799814
PMID: 35089448
Abstract
Upon hearing someone's speech, a listener can access information such as the speaker's age, gender identity, socioeconomic status, and their linguistic background. However, an open question is whether living in different locales modulates how listeners use these factors to assess speakers' speech. Here, an audio-visual test was used to measure whether listeners' accentedness judgments and intelligibility (i.e., speech perception) can be modulated depending on racial information in faces that they see. American, British, and Indian English were used as three different English varieties of speech. These speech samples were presented with either a white female face or a South Asian female face. Two experiments were completed in two locales: Gainesville, Florida (USA) and Montreal, Quebec (Canada). Overall, Montreal listeners were more accurate in their transcription of sentences (i.e., intelligibility) compared to Gainesville listeners. Moreover, Gainesville listeners' ability to transcribe the same spoken sentences decreased for all varieties when listening to speech paired with South Asian faces. However, seeing a white or a South Asian face did not impact speech intelligibility for the same spoken sentences for Montreal listeners. Finally, listeners' accentedness judgments increased for American English and Indian English when the visual information changed from a white face to a South Asian face in Gainesville, but not in Montreal. These findings suggest that visual cues for race impact speech perception to a greater degree in locales with greater ecological diversity.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Does race impact speech perception? An account of accented speech in two different multilingual locales
- Creators
- Ethan Kutlu - University of IowaMehrgol Tiv - McGill UniversityStefanie Wulff - University of FloridaDebra Titone - McGill University
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Cognitive research: principles and implications, Vol.7(1), pp.7-7
- DOI
- 10.1186/s41235-022-00354-0
- PMID
- 35089448
- PMCID
- PMC8799814
- NLM abbreviation
- Cogn Res Princ Implic
- ISSN
- 2365-7464
- eISSN
- 2365-7464
- Grant note
- DOI: 10.13039/501100000038, name: Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, award: Grant 261769-13; DOI: 10.13039/501100000155, name: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, award: Grants 430-2016-01037, Grants 435-2019-1264
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 01/28/2022
- Academic Unit
- Linguistics; Psychological and Brain Sciences; Center for Social Science Innovation
- Record Identifier
- 9984446554102771
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