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Why Don't We Believe Non-Native Speakers? The Influence of Accent on Credibility
Abstract
Non-native speech is harder to understand than native speech. We demonstrate that this “processing difficulty” causes non-native speakers to sound less credible. People judged trivia statements such as “Ants don't sleep” as less true when spoken by a non-native than a native speaker. When people were made aware of the source of their difficulty they were able to correct when the accent was mild but not when it was heavy. This effect was not due to stereotypes of prejudice against foreigners because it occurred even though speakers were merely reciting statements provided by a native speaker. Such reduction of credibility may have an insidious impact on millions of people, who routinely communicate in a language which is not their native tongue.
... In another study, Parks and Toth (2006) found even stronger effects on truth judgments when they manipulated fluency by embedding target statements in congruent (high fluency) versus incongruent (low fluency) semantic contexts. Finally, Lev-Ari and Keysar (2010) showed that disfluency manipulated by speech accent reduced the judged truth of statements. All these manipulations of fluencyfigure-ground contrast, semantic context, and accentinfluenced the judged truth of statements in experimental paradigms without repeated exposure. ...
... Similarly, the illusory truth effect is similar for children aged 5 and 10 and adults (Fazio & Sherry, 2020). As judgments of truth are influenced by processing fluency (Lev-Ari & Keysar, 2010;Parks & Toth, 2006;Reber & Schwarz, 1999), the existence of the illusory truth effect across development suggests stability of fluency effects. ...
... A study with adults showed that statements read with a foreign accent were considered less credible. As the source of the statements was not the same as the speaker, and drawing attention to the difficulty of understanding increased credibility of accented speech, the observed effect presumably depended on fluency (Lev-Ari & Keysar, 2010). This fluency account has not been tested with children but only with adults. ...
... There is growing evidence that speaking with a foreign accent alters behavioural and neurocognitive responses during sentence comprehension (Foucart & Hartsuiker, 2021;Grey & van Hell, 2017;Song & Iverson, 2018), empathic affiliation with a speaker (Mauchand et al., 2023), moral judgments (Foucart & Brouwer, 2021), irony detection (Bazzi et al., 2022;Caffarra et al., 2018;Puhacheuskaya & Järvikivi, 2022), trust evaluation (Caballero & Pell, 2020;Lev-Ari & Keysar, 2010), and basic emotion perception (Bazzi et al., 2024;Hatzidaki et al., 2015). Thus, if someone says, "You are so boring", would this statement have the same impact if the speaker had a foreign versus native accent? ...
Evaluative statements are routine in interpersonal communication but may evoke different responses depending on the speaker’s identity. Here, thirty participants listened to direct compliments and criticisms spoken in native or foreign accents and rated the speaker's friendliness as their electroencephalogram was recorded. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were examined for (1) vocal speech cues time-locked to statement onset and (2) emotive semantic attributes at the sentence-final word. Criticisms from native speakers were perceived as less friendly than from foreign speakers, whereas compliments did not differ. ERPs revealed listeners rapidly used acoustic information to differentiate speaker identity and evaluative attitude (N100, P200), then selectively monitored vocal attitude expressed by native speakers in the LPP time window. When the evaluative word was heard, native accents contextually modulated early semantic processing (N400). Words of criticism increased the LPP irrespective of accent. Our data showcase unique neurocognitive and behavioural effects of speaker accent on interpersonal communication.
... For example, several workgroup members were clinical neuropsychologists AND female AND L2 English speakers AND early career stage investigators. Each of these individual differences can pose significant challenges in conversational discourse, such as more intrusive interruptions (Anderson & Leaper, 1998) and lower perceived credibility (Lev-Ari & Keysar, 2010). Intersectionality of numerous individual differences can compound such biases, potentially silencing important voices. ...
Tulving (1972) characterized semantic memory as a vast repository of meaning that underlies language and many other cognitive processes. This perspective on lexical and conceptual knowledge galvanized a new era of research undertaken by numerous fields, each with their own idiosyncratic methods and terminology. For example, ‘concept’ has different meanings in philosophy, linguistics, and psychology. As such, many fundamental constructs used to delineate semantic theories remain underspecified and/or opaque. Weak construct specificity is among the leading causes of the replication crisis now facing psychology and related fields. Term ambiguity hinders cross-disciplinary communication, falsifiability, and incremental theory-building. Numerous cognitive subdisciplines (e.g., vision, affective neuroscience) have recently addressed these limitations via the development of consensus-based guidelines and definitions. The project to follow represents our effort to produce a multidisciplinary semantic glossary consisting of succinct definitions, background, principled dissenting views, ratings of agreement, and subjective confidence for 17 target constructs (e.g., abstractness, abstraction, concreteness, concept, embodied cognition, event semantics, lexical-semantic, modality, representation, semantic control, semantic feature, simulation, semantic distance, semantic dimension). We discuss potential benefits and pitfalls (e.g., implicit bias, prescriptiveness) of these efforts to specify a common nomenclature that other researchers might index in specifying their own theoretical perspectives (e.g., They said X, but I mean Y).
... For example, simulations where employees experience speaking in a non-native accent can help them understand the challenges their colleagues face. Sharing case studies and examples from within the organization (anonymized if necessary) or from other companies can illustrate the real impacts of accent bias on career progression and employee morale (Lev-Ari & Keysar, 2010). Equipping employees with practical strategies can counteract bias, such as actively listening to content over accent, and fostering a mindset that values diverse perspectives. ...
Women with non-native accents face difficulties being perceived as having the knowledge and skills needed for promotions into leadership positions. While women already face gender bias, epistemic injustice because of their accents adds to their unjust treatment. We urge management to explore the realities of epistemic injustices and to actively look for their unconscious prejudices that lead to injustices for women with accents. We provide recommendations on how managers can create fair and inclusive leadership for women with non-native accents by adding an intersectional and epistemic injustice lens to the glass ceiling phenomenon.
... A speaker's accent is used by listeners to determine facts about the speaker, including, perhaps most obviously, their likely place of origin (e.g., Carmichael, 2016). However, a speaker's accent is also used by listeners for a variety of other aspects of perception including properties of the speaker that are not explicit in SOUND COMMUNITIES 18 the speech, including intelligence, trustworthiness, and competence (e.g., Jackson & Denis, 2024;Lev-Ari & Keysar, 2010). These features then impact how listeners perceive the speech produced by the speaker (Jiang et al., 2020). ...
Bilingualism researchers have intensively studied how learning and using multiple languagesaffects all levels of linguistic structure. In this strand, examining diversity in the bilingualexperience and the extent to which variables like language dominance regulate crosslinguisticinteraction has been of special interest. However, most studies sample small groups of bilingualsfrom a single research site, creating a twofold generalizability problem. First, with small samplesit is unlikely that researchers will be able to fully capture and quantify the range of variablesknown to affect findings. Second, when bilinguals are recruited from a single site, it isimpossible to determine if findings are site-specific or apply to bilinguals more broadly. Toaddress these issues, we propose a large(r)-scale, multisite approach to bilingualism research. Webelieve that such an approach, when informed by open science practices, has the potential tosignificantly advance the state of the art.
... Hypotheses 1 and 2 were not supported: there was no main effect of accent or CO. Accent has been reliably shown to affect many aspects of person perception and impression formation (Cantone et al., 2019;Gluszek and Dovidio, 2010;Lev-Ari and Keysar, 2011;Moyer, 2013) thus it is surprising that Hypothesis 1 was not supported. It was expected that there would be a main effect of accent which has been observed previously in a US sample (e.g., Frumkin, 2007). ...
Introduction
Conducting research to better understand the role of extralegal factors in courtroom decision-making requires either labor intensive methods, such as simulating a trial, or approaches that are not ecologically valid, such as using short written case vignettes. If avatars could be used in simulated courtrooms, experiments could more easily manipulate extralegal variables for study without requiring significant resourcing, for example hiring actors and having access to a courtroom. The current study used previously developed stimulus materials of a human eyewitness in a courtroom and created a comparable avatar eyewitness and virtual courtroom to assess ratings of the human and avatar.
Method
Participants (N = 703) saw one of 12 videos depicting an eyewitness on the stand at a criminal trial recounting a burglary. The design was a 2 × 2 × 3, mode of presentation (human or avatar), accent (General American English or non-standard) and country of origin (Germany, Mexico or Lebanon). Three actors voiced each human and avatar pair using General American English and one of the non-standard accents (German, Mexican or Lebanese) so that variation in ratings could be attributed to presentation mode, accent and country of origin.
Results
An analysis of covariance revealed that the avatar witnesses were rated more favorably than the humans and there were no main effects of accent nor country of origin, contrary to previous research using the human video stimuli. A three-way interaction showed the Lebanese human non-standard accented witness was rated more poorly than her standard-accented counterpart, her avatar counterpart, and the Mexican and German human non-standard accented witnesses.
Discussion
Findings reveal that avatar witnesses cannot yet reliably replace their human counterparts. Discussion as to what can be done in future to further investigate how to create courtroom stimulus materials is presented along with possible explanations as to the reasons for different findings in this research than previous studies.
... Volunteers rated statements recited by native English speakers more truthful than statements recited by speakers of accented English (whose native tongues included Polish, Turkish, Italian, and Korean). 40 ...
Erroneous beliefs are difficult to correct. Worse, popular correction strategies, such as the myth-versus-fact article format, may backfire because they subtly reinforce the myths through repetition and further increase the spread and acceptance of misinformation. Here we identify five key criteria people employ as they evaluate the truth of a statement: They assess general acceptance by others, gauge the amount of supporting evidence, determine its compatibility with their beliefs, assess the general coherence of the statement, and judge the credibility of the source of the information. In assessing these five criteria, people can actively seek additional information (an effortful analytic strategy) or attend to the subjective experience of easy mental processing—what psychologists call fluent processing—and simply draw conclusions on the basis of what feels right (a less effortful intuitive strategy). Throughout this truth-evaluation effort, fluent processing can facilitate acceptance of the statement: When thoughts flow smoothly, people nod along. Unfortunately, many correction strategies inadvertently make the false information more easily acceptable by, for example, repeating it or illustrating it with anecdotes and pictures. This, ironically, increases the likelihood that the false information the communicator wanted to debunk will be believed later. A more promising correction strategy is to focus on making the true information as easy to process as possible. We review recent research and offer recommendations for more effective presentation and correction strategies.
... Specifically, participants argued for the equality for all English varieties and against the superiority of inner circle Englishes. Outside of L2 assessment contexts, studies have also reported that when hearing non-standard GE varieties, listeners may demonstrate a preference for their own way of speaking (i.e., own-accent bias) due to the similarities in accents that make speech more intelligible (Bestelmeyer et al., 2015) and trustworthy (Lev-Ari & Keysar, 2010). ...
... We chose this method of more simply parsing out North American subjects from Global subjects as has been used in prior international research (Luo et al., 2021;Wilson et al., 2020). Further, native versus non-native speakers have been shown to be perceived by others differently based on their own native language and this, in turn, may impact the leader's perceived credibility (Hanzlíková & Skarnitzl, 2017;Lev-Ari, 2015;Lev-Ari & Keysar, 2010). We thought this might produce some interesting results by choosing this method of parsing subjects into a North American (English as primary languagenative) versus a Global sample (English as not primary languagenonnative). ...
A very important challenge facing leaders and followers alike is how to navigate the virtual workplace where much of our communication and interactions occur through the use of technology. This field experiment examined whether a leader's choice of communication media given the situational uncertainty (termed uncertainty-media fit here to parallel related research) impacted the amount and type of trust (cognitive versus affective) that developed between leaders and followers. Further, we tested whether the leader's perceived level of psychological capital (PsyCap) impacted the results obtained. To test our hypotheses, 326 participants were randomly assigned to one of four conditions of high (low) media richness×high (low) situational uncertainty. Results of our study indicated that communication media choice, in and of itself, did not seem to impact results. However, the situational uncertainty present in our scenarios impacted subjects’ amount and type of trust in the leaders, lending credence to the argument that perhaps technology is, in fact, more based on how it is interpreted, rather than whether the leader uses media higher in richness to communicate more complex information. Further, subjects’ perception of the leader's psychological capital (PsyCap) moderated results obtained. In addition to limitations and suggestions for future research, we conclude with practical implications for leaders that may have an impact on the amount and type of trust that develops between leaders and followers in a virtual work environment.
... However, there also exist several failures to demonstrate this effect of foreign accent on credibility (e.g., Souza and Markman, 2013;Stocker, 2017;Wetzel et al., 2021). Indeed, for mild foreign accents little to no support exists for an effect on credibility (Lev-Ari and Keysar, 2010). ...
The current study tested the potential effect of regional-accented speech on perceived credibility. Canarian and Madrid listeners were presented with a series of audio recordings in which speakers read out loud news items with either a Canarian or a Madrid accent, and they were tasked to rate the credibility of each news item. The within-subject manipulation of accent demonstrated a small but significant effect on credibility judgment, which was not moderated by listener’s origin. Specifically, in line with socio-linguistic stereotyping, news items presented in a Canarian accent were judged as less credible on average than news items presented in a Madrid accent. These findings are discussed both within the perspective of cognitive-linguistic theory, and within a sociological perspective.
... According to Social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1979), group membership is linked to favouritism and enhancement of the in-group. The group to which a speaker belongs can be conveyed by a speaker's accent (Labov, 2006), and speakers typically judge their own accent as the most favourable and trustworthy (Coupland & Bishop, 2007;Edwards, 1982;Lev-Ari & Keysar, 2010;Mulac et al., 1974;Ryan & Sebastian, 1980). It is therefore possible that those using the Tromsø dialect in their speech would reap the most benefits from interactions in the host society and thus have a positive experience with the dialect. ...
Aims and Objectives/Purpose/Research Questions
There is scant literature on second dialect acquisition for both L1 and L2 speakers (Drummond, 2013; Gnevsheva et al., 2022), with no literature on L3 speakers. In this article, we focus on dialect acquisition in multilinguals, in participants’ third or additional language acquired in adulthood. We explore this in the context of Norway, a country with significant dialectal variation and where dialects have relative prestige.
Design/Methodology/Approach
A translation task and an acceptability judgement task (AJT) were used to assess Polish–English–Norwegian speakers’ production (in the lexicon) and perception (in morphosyntax) of the Tromsø dialect.
Data and Analysis
We assessed use of dialect forms in the translation task between groups (L1 Norwegian-L2 English and L1 Polish-L2 English-L3 Norwegian) with a linear mixed effects model. We also used Random Forests and a linear mixed effects model to assess dialect use within the L1 Polish group against seventeen sociolinguistic and linguistic variables. Finally, we used a linear mixed effects model to examine AJT responses between groups.
Findings/conclusions
We find that some participants use the Tromsø dialect in production (albeit variably), and key predictors of this are how much they like the Tromsø dialect and passive language use in Norwegian. Participants do not appear to be sensitive to dialectal differences in morphosyntax.
Significance/Implications
L3 learners who immigrated as adults can and do use the local dialect, and this use is modulated by social factors. In addition, such learners seem more able to use and exploit their knowledge of dialectal differences at the lexical level.
... In the remainder of this introduction, I provide an overview of each study in this special issue, highlighting its main components and discussing how the replication study strengthens the field and advances knowledge and understanding about the topic. Barlow et al. (2024) examined the ways that "native" and "non-native" listeners judge "foreign-accented" speech, contributing to an established line of SLA research suggesting that statements produced by "foreign-accented" speakers are less likely to be judged as true than those produced by "native speakers" (e.g., Hanzlíková & Skarnitzl, 2017;Lev-Ari & Keysar, 2010). While some studies suggest that these results might be attributable to processing difficulty, accent-based prejudice, or both, findings are mixed, at best, resulting in very little clarity and consensus on this topic. ...
A long-standing concern in the field of second language acquisition is that replication studies are not only infrequent but also poorly designed, reported, and labeled. This special issue responds to an urgent need for action by showcasing eleven high-quality replication studies. In doing so, this collection highlights exemplary standards in replication study design and reporting. This introduction to the special issue provides readers with a point of reference for what replication research is, including why replication studies are needed, issues about originality and innovation in replication research, how replication studies can be designed and conducted, and recent advances and resources to support future replication efforts in the field. The introduction concludes with an overview of each study in the special issue, highlighting its main components and discussing how the replication strengthens the field and advances knowledge and understanding about the topic.
... We also suggest that future experiments account for how individual biases evolve based on signals of social identity in response to changing group relationships. While previous research has established that such signals drive preferential treatment (Kinzler, 2021), and even the perception of veracity (Lev-Ari & Keysar, 2010), it is unknown, following the model we espouse here, whether evolving relationships between groups, and the consequent ethnification of group-level signals, directly affect interpersonal treatment. We suggest that economic games are used to explore this further. ...
Previous research in the evolutionary and psychological sciences has suggested that markers or tags of ethnic or group membership may help to solve cooperation and coordination problems. Cheating remains, however, a problem for these views, insofar as it is possible to fake the tag. While evolutionary psychologists have suggested that humans evolved the propensity to overcome this free rider problem, it is unclear how this module might manifest at the group level. In this study, we investigate the degree to which native and non-native speakers of accents – which are candidates for tags of group membership – spoken in the UK and Ireland can detect mimicry. We find that people are, overall, better than chance at detecting mimicry, and secondly we find substantial inter-group heterogeneity, suggesting that cultural evolutionary processes drive the manifestations of cheater detection. We discuss alternative explanations and suggest avenues of further inquiry.
... Specifically, nonNESs tend to be perceived as being less competent (e.g., Geiger et al., 2023) and having less political skills to successfully navigate managerial challenges (e.g., Huang et al., 2013). Relatedly, messages delivered by nonNESs tend to be perceived as less persuasive (e.g., Livingston et al., 2017) and less credible (e.g., Lev-Ari & Keysar, 2010). ...
... This implied that Mandarin represented the in-group for listeners. Therefore, the differences in perceived confidence levels were essentially in-group advantage, consistent with previous research Lev-Ari and Keysar, 2010). Future studies could consider the impact of individual differences among listeners on perceptual outcomes. ...
Language communicators use acoustic-phonetic cues to convey a variety of social information in the spoken language, and the learning of a second language affects speech production in a social setting. It remains unclear how speaking different dialects could affect the acoustic metrics underlying the intended communicative meanings. Nine Chinese Bayannur-Mandarin bidialectics produced single-digit numbers in statements of both Standard Mandarin and the Bayannur dialect with different levels of intended confidence. Fifteen listeners judged the intention presence and confidence level. Prosodically unmarked and marked stimuli exhibited significant differences in perceived intention. A higher intended level was perceived as more confident. The acoustic analysis revealed the segmental (third and fourth formants, center of gravity), suprasegmental (mean fundamental frequency, fundamental frequency range, duration), and source features (harmonic to noise ratio, cepstral peak prominence) can distinguish between confident and doubtful expressions. Most features also distinguished between dialect and Mandarin productions. Interactions on fourth formant and mean fundamental frequency suggested that speakers made greater use of acoustic parameters to encode confidence and doubt in the Bayannur dialect than in Mandarin. In machine learning experiments, the above-chance-level overall classification rates for confidence and doubt and the in-group advantage supported the dialect theory.
... It is not clear what mechanisms might drive this bias toward our own accent. The current study minimized a familiarity explanation of implicit preference for the in-group accent (e.g., Gass & Varonis, 1984;Lev-Ari & Keysar, 2010) because both groups were familiar with each other's regional accent. It has previously been demonstrated, typically for foreign accents, that language attitudes are influenced by listeners' processing fluency. ...
Accents provide information about a speaker's geographical, socio-economic, and ethnic background. An additional important variable in the social evaluation of accented speech is the listener's own accent. Just as with any in-group marker, there is a preference for accented speakers that sound like us. Here we employed an auditory version of the implicit association test to quantify own-accent bias. At a Welsh university, we recruited two groups of participants born and raised in distinct regions within the UK, Wales and England. These regions have a long-standing history of national rivalry. In Experiments 1 and 2 we show that the magnitude of the implicitly measured own-accent bias in both groups was comparable to biases based on visible group membership (e.g., race). In addition, Experiment 2 shows that this implicitly measured bias was large compared to the explicitly reported preference. The effect sizes of the in-group preference reported here may have societal impact.
... Non-native speech is generally seen as less prestigious and socially attractive (Coupland and Bishop 2007), and non-native speakers are often judged as less employable (Timming 2017; Ramjattan 2022), less competent (Gluszek and Dovidio 2010), and less intelligent (Tsalikis et al. 1991). Lev-Ari and Keysar (2010) found that native speakers rated statements as less true if spoken by a non-native speaker, affecting perceptions of credibility and trustworthiness. While research has shown these evaluations are influenced by racialized stereotypes (Lippi-Green 2012; Alim et al. 2016), the exact features of non-native accents that lead to these judgments, potentially including pause patterns, remain unclear. ...
This study explores how inter-turn speech pauses influence the perception of cognitive states such as knowledge, confidence, and willingness to grant requests in conversational settings. Longer pauses are typically associated with lower competence and willingness, but Matzinger et al. (2023) discovered that this attribution varies when non-native speakers are involved. They found that listeners were more tolerant of long pauses from non-native than from native speakers when assessing their willingness to grant requests. This may result from the fact that listeners may attribute long pauses to the additional cognitive load non-native speakers face when processing and responding in a second language. This tolerance towards long pauses by non-native speakers did not extend to judgments about non-native speakers’ knowledge and confidence - potentially because knowledge questions are less socially engaging than requests. Here, we replicated and extended Matzinger et al.’s (2023) experiment, which focussed on speakers of Polish, to a cross-cultural context with speakers of Chinese. Our results confirmed that non-native accent mediates perceptions of willingness, but not knowledge or confidence. These findings suggest that inter-turn speech pauses play a nuanced role in cognitive state attribution of native and non-native speakers and that cultural factors minimally influence these perceptions. This may indicate that the mechanisms involved are rooted in evolutionarily fundamental aspects of human social communication and cognition.
... When perceived by L1 (native) listeners, accentual variation does not only hinder intelligibility [3], and introduce additional processing cost [4,5], but also elicit negative biases against the speaker. It, for example, diminishes the perceived credibility of statements [6], hinders the estimation of the speaker's affective state [7], and triggers unfavorable evaluations of personality traits [2,8]. Regarding the latter, a meta-analysis by [2] examined the effects of L2 accentedness on personality trait assessments across 20 studies including several languages. ...
... A substantial body of research has scrutinized how different groups are discriminated against, with clear implications for EDI research and practices (e.g., Comer et al., 2023). With respect to accented L2 speakers in particular, they tend to receive less favorable social, experiential, and professional evaluations (e.g., perceived as less trustworthy, credible, effective, and competent) than L1 speakers (e.g., Baquiran and Nicoladis, 2020;Lev-Ari and Keysar, 2010;Ramjattan, 2021;Teló et al., 2022). These negative perceptions hold particular significance within decision-making domains, where professionals serve as gatekeepers to employment opportunities. ...
Purpose: High-stakes decision-makers, including human resource (HR) professionals, often exhibit accent biases against second language speakers in professional evaluations. We extend this work by investigating how HR students evaluate simulated job interview performances in English by first and second language speakers of English.
Design/methodology/approach: Eighty HR students from Calgary and Montreal evaluated the employability of first language (L1) Arabic, English, and Tagalog candidates applying for two positions (nurse, teacher) at four points in the interview (after reading the applicant's resume, hearing their self-introduction, and listening to each of two responses to interview questions). Candidates' responses additionally varied in the extent to which they meaningfully answered the interview questions.
Findings: Students from both cities provided similar evaluations, employability ratings were similar for both advertised positions, and high-quality responses elicited consistently high ratings while evaluations for low-quality responses declined over time. All speakers were evaluated similarly based on their resumes and self-introductions, regardless of their language background. However, evaluations diverged for interview responses, where L1 Arabic and Tagalog speakers were considered more employable than L1 English speakers. Importantly, students' preference for L1 Arabic and Tagalog candidates over L1 English candidates was magnified when those candidates provided low-quality interview responses.
Originality: Results suggest that even in the absence of dedicated equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) training focusing on language and accent bias, HR students may be aware of second language speakers' potential disadvantages in the workplace, rewarding them in the current evaluations. Findings also highlight the potential influence of contextual factors on HR students' decision-making.
... This research can provide valuable insights that inform policies aimed at reducing discrimination based on non-native accents and dialects. For example, to further explore the impact of non-native accents on credibility, our methodology can be combined with experiments similar to those conducted by Lev-Ari et al. [58]. In their study, participants were presented with trivia statements spoken by speakers with varying degrees of accentedness and were asked to judge the truthfulness of the statements. ...
Current accent conversion (AC) systems do not disentangle the two main sources of non-native accent: segmental and prosodic characteristics. Being able to manipulate a non-native speaker's segmental and/or prosodic channels independently is critical to quantify how these two channels contribute to speech comprehensibility and social attitudes. We present an AC system that not only decouples voice quality from accent, but also disentangles the latter into its segmental and prosodic characteristics. The system is able to generate accent conversions that combine (1) the segmental characteristics from a source utterance, (2) the voice characteristics from a target utterance, and (3) the prosody of a reference utterance. We show that vector quantization of acoustic embeddings and removal of consecutive duplicated codewords allows the system to transfer prosody and improve voice similarity. We conduct perceptual listening tests to quantify the individual contributions of segmental features and prosody on the perceived comprehensibility of non-native speech. Our results indicate that, contrary to prior research in non-native speech, segmental features have a larger impact on comprehensibility than prosody. The proposed AC system may also be used to study how segmental and prosody cues affect social attitudes towards non-native speech.
... These difficulties in foreign or second language (L2) pronunciation might stem from inaccurate perception and/or from articulatory constraints (for a review, see [1]). In both cases, foreign accent strongly impacts speech perception at a physiological level [2,3] and this results in strong social consequences [4] and even changes in moral judgment [5]. In recent years, accentedness started impacting not only social interactions, but more and more human-computer interactions [6][7][8]. ...
Accentedness is a prominent feature of foreign language learning. While humans have a remarkable capacity to adapt their perception to accents, they remain a hard challenge to the robustness of automatic speech recognition (ASR). In particular, the necessity to use large non-native annotated datasets for model training remains a crucial issue. This paper investigates the possibility of reducing the data need of these systems by using targeted training datasets, focusing on the most challenging rather than on all non-native phonemes. Specifically, the study examines whether training data for ASR, and accent identification systems in particular, could focus not on global but on segmental accent. Segmental accent refers to the deviations in pronouncing specific phonemes, while global accent captures the extent to which a non-native speaker is perceived to differ from a native one. An accent identification problem was formulated, where models were trained on two types of data: full words (i.e., global accent) versus isolated difficult vowels (i.e., segmental accent), both uttered by natives and non-natives. Two novel highly controlled and professionally annotated datasets were used for that purpose. Throughout experiments, a transfer learning approach using pretrained deep residual neural networks was applied, with subsequent comparison to a baseline support vector machine. Results showed that although word-based classification yielded better accuracy, the dataset consisting of isolated vowels could account for much of the accent, when used with both methods (up to 80%). Applications of this approach and the possibility of using smaller, but more representative datasets are discussed.
... Moreover, race (or perceptions of pan-ethnic identity) and its intersections with other identities and social personae modulate listener expectations, impacting speech perception and social evaluations (Babel & Russell, 2015;D'Onofrio, 2019;McGowan, 2015, p. 201;Rubin, 1992). The literature on the perception of Asian speech (whether of L2 or L1 English speakers) makes it clear that people who are racialized as Asian are subject to a series of stereotypes linked to decreased communication ability, credibility, intelligence, and attractiveness (Babel & Russell, 2015;Bauman, 2013;Cargile, 1997;Hosoda et al., 2007;Kutlu, 2020;Kutlu & Wiltshire, 2020;Lev-Ari & Keysar, 2010;Lindemann, 2003;Rubin, 1992). Stereotypes of APINA speech erase the creative and legitimate uses of language that APINA speakers employ, whether using English, a diasporic language, or a mix of both. ...
Within sociolinguistic research on English variation, Asian and Pacific Islander North Americans (APINAs) are frequently described as an “understudied population” due to the relative lack of published studies that analyze these speakers or communities. This structured literature review systematically characterizes the state of the field from a variationist perspective. We find that while studies on APINAs have become more common in the last decade, different groups are represented unevenly in the existing literature; for example, East Asian groups are commonly represented in the literature in contrast to South Asian groups. Furthermore, the vast majority of variationist studies analyze phonetic and phonological variation, with a theoretical focus on identifying participation in race-based varieties (ethnolects/raciolects) or in sound changes of the “majority” population, rather than using the inherent diversity of APINA groups to bring attention to how race and ethnicity are being used in Sociolinguistics.
... A speaker's accent is used by listeners to determine facts about the speaker, including, perhaps most obviously, their likely place of origin (e.g., Carmichael, 2016). However, a speaker's accent is also used by listeners for a variety of other aspects of perception including properties of the speaker that are not explicit in the speech, including intelligence, trustworthiness, and competence (e.g., Jackson & Denis, 2024;Lev-Ari & Keysar, 2010). These features then impact how listeners perceive the speech produced by the speaker (Jiang et al., 2020). ...
Bilingualism researchers have intensively studied how learning and using multiple languages affects all levels of linguistic structure. In this strand, examining diversity in the bilingual experience and the extent to which variables like language dominance regulate crosslinguistic interaction has been of special interest. However, most studies have sampled a small group of bilinguals from a single research site, which creates a twofold generalizability problem. First, with small samples it is unlikely that researchers will be able to fully capture and quantify the range of variables known to affect findings. Second, when bilinguals are recruited from a single site, it is impossible to determine if findings are site-specific or apply more broadly. To address these issues, we propose a large(r)-scale, multisite approach to bilingualism research. We believe that such an approach, when informed by open science practices, has the potential to significantly advance the state of the art.
Research has documented significant evidence of workplace bias in the United States, yet less focus has been given to the Latino working population, particularly related to those in high‐paying professional roles, despite the growing presence of Latinos in the US workforce. In this study, we integrate two complementary theories, that is, impression formation and expectancy violation theories, to examine the factors—including the presence of a Latino accent—that may lead to Latino bias during the personnel selection process of an information technology manager. We test our hypotheses using two separate studies. Results from an experimental study (Study 1; N = 458) suggest that managers make decisions based on the candidates' ethnicity during the evaluation of candidates' resumes and interviews, and we find evidence of bias against Latino candidates with a Latino accent and in favor of Latino candidates with an American accent. Next, using a time‐lagged experiment and path analysis (Study 2, N = 328), we find support for the mediation role of expectancy violation. The disclosure of a Latino accent was related to changes in expectancy violation, which in turn were related to same‐direction changes in the ratings of personnel selection outcomes. These results suggest that the presence of a Latino accent is meaningful in personnel selection decisions and that expectancy violation is one of the mediating mechanisms by which these relationships occur.
Les recherches sur la diversité ont depuis longtemps établi que les attitudes à l’égard des membres de groupes minoritaires sont influencées par divers marqueurs d’appartenance, notamment la couleur de la peau. Mais si ces marqueurs sont principalement visuels , qu’en est-il des marqueurs auditifs , comme l’accent d’une personne immigrante? Cette recherche tente de comprendre l’effet des marqueurs visuels et auditifs sur la perception de la crédibilité des individus par le groupe majoritaire. Ces effets sont-ils additifs, de sorte que le groupe majoritaire juge plus négativement les membres d’une minorité à la fois auditive et visible, ou sélectifs, de sorte qu’un des marqueurs suffit à modifier la perception de la crédibilité? Pour étudier ces questions, nous utilisons les données d’une expérience en ligne réalisée au Québec et en Ontario et visant à comprendre comment les répondants perçoivent la crédibilité de divers experts scientifiques d’origines et d’accents différents. Les résultats suggèrent que le fait d’avoir un accent étranger et de faire partie d’une minorité visible nuit à la possibilité d’être considéré comme un expert crédible par les membres du groupe majoritaire. De plus, il existe des différences importantes quant à l’effet des marqueurs d’appartenance en Ontario et au Québec, les répondants du Québec se concentrant davantage sur les marqueurs auditifs que ceux de l’Ontario.
South Asians are a fast-growing, heterogeneous ethnic group in the United States. However, they remain understudied in health equity research despite experiencing a high burden of cardiovascular disease. Biased assumptions, such as the model minority myth, obscure their unique experiences of discrimination—a known contributor to cardiovascular disease–related health inequities. The form and pattern of everyday discrimination among South Asians has been largely unexamined. We addressed this gap by examining the dimensionality of the everyday discrimination scale (EDS) and its potential predictors among South Asians. Data are from the Mediators of Atherosclerosis in South Asians Living in America (MASALA; 2010–2018), a cross-sectional community sample (N = 1164, 52% male, Mage = 56.73, SDage = 9.41). Structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis was used to conduct confirmatory factor analyses to estimate a measurement model for the latent variable of everyday discrimination and a structural model to examine associations between hypothesized predictors and the latent everyday discrimination variable. Confirmatory factor analyses revealed that a six-item, unidimensional version of the EDS fit the data best. SEM analyses showed that everyday discrimination was socially patterned across individual-, health-, community-, and cultural characteristics. Findings highlight the importance of considering how social positionalities and context may shape exposure to everyday discrimination. Importantly, our results have implications for identifying South Asian individuals at an increased risk of experiencing everyday discrimination and its associated health inequities, including cardiovascular disease–related outcomes.
When talking to other people, we naturally form impressions based not only on what they say but also on how they say it—e.g., how confident they sound. In modern life, however, the sounds of voices are often determined not only by intrinsic qualities (such as vocal anatomy) but also by extrinsic properties (such as videoconferencing microphone quality). Here, we show that such superficial auditory properties can have surprisingly deep consequences for higher-level social judgments. Listeners heard short narrated passages (e.g., from job application essays) and then made various judgments about the speakers. Critically, the recordings were modified to simulate different microphone qualities, while carefully equating listeners’ comprehension of the words. Though the manipulations carried no implications about the speakers themselves, common disfluent auditory signals (as in “tinny” speech) led to decreased judgments of intelligence, hireability, credibility, and romantic desirability. These effects were robust across speaker gender and accent, and they occurred for both human and clearly artificial (computer-synthesized) speech. Thus, just as judgments from written text are influenced by factors such as font fluency, judgments from speech are not only based on its content but also biased by the superficial vehicle through which it is delivered. Such effects may become more relevant as daily communication via videoconferencing becomes increasingly widespread.
Preconceived assumptions about the speaker have been shown to strongly and automatically influence speech interpretation. This study contributes to previous research by investigating the impact of non-nativeness on perceived metaphor sensibility. To eliminate the effects of speech disfluency, we used exclusively written sentences but introduced their "authors" as having a strong native or non-native accent through a written vignette. The author's language proficiency was never mentioned. Metaphorical sentences featured familiar ("The pictures streamed through her head") and unfamiliar ("The textbooks snored on the desk") verbal metaphors and closely matched literal expressions from a pre-tested database. We also administered a battery of psychological tests to assess whether ratings could be predicted by individual differences. The results revealed that all sentences attributed to the non-native speaker were perceived as less sensical. Incorporating the identity of the non-native speaker also took more effort, as indicated by longer processing and evaluation times. Additionally, while a general bias against non-native speakers emerged even without oral speech, person-based factors played a significant role. Lower ratings of non-native compared to native speakers were largely driven by individuals from less linguistically diverse backgrounds and those with less cognitive reflection. Extraversion and political ideology also modulated ratings in a unique way. The study highlights the impact of preconceived notions about the speaker on sentence processing and the importance of taking interpersonal variation into account.
Trust is essential for social interactions, including those between humans and social artificial agents, such as robots. Several factors and combinations thereof can contribute to the formation of trust and, importantly in the case of machines that work with a certain margin of error, to its maintenance and repair after it has been breached. In this paper, we present the results of a study aimed at investigating the role of robot voice and chosen repair strategy on trust formation and repair in a collaborative task. People helped a robot navigate through a maze, and the robot made mistakes at pre-defined points during the navigation. Via in-game behaviour and follow-up questionnaires, we could measure people's trust towards the robot. We found that people trusted the robot speaking with a state-of-the-art synthetic voice more than with the default robot voice in the game, even though they indicated the opposite in the questionnaires. Additionally, we found that three repair strategies that people use in human-human interaction (justification of the mistake, promise to be better, and denial of the mistake) work also in human-robot interaction.
Previous fluency research has demonstrated that when messages are heard in degraded audio quality, the speaker and the content they are communicating are judged more negatively than when heard in high quality. Using a virtual court paradigm, we investigated the efficacy of two different instructions to reduce the technology‐based bias—highlighting (1) the source responsible for audio quality (Experiment 1) and (2) variations in audio quality (Experiment 2). Results converged in showing that when instructions were provided prior to listening to recordings, people continued to evaluate speakers presented in low quality more negatively than those in high quality. However, results from Experiment 2 suggested that instructions provided after recordings may be effective and warrant further investigation. Given the digital divide and disproportionate impact of digital disruptions, these findings raise concerns about equity in high stakes environments such as remote justice.
This chapter defines the concepts of race, ethnicity, racism, discrimination, prejudice, stereotypes, ethnocentrism, cultural relativism, and xenophobia. It argues that race should be viewed as a social construct rather than a biological reality, emphasizing that characteristics considered racial markers, such as skin color, are superficial outcomes of environmental adaptations without any substantial linkage to cultural or behavioral traits. The social construction of race is further explored, highlighting how it has been historically manipulated to justify the subjugation of various groups during European colonization. The chapter also distinguishes race from ethnicity, which is more closely aligned with cultural and communal similarities. It delves into how stereotypes and prejudices, often based on simplistic and inaccurate beliefs, underpin discriminatory behaviors and racism. The chapter also touches on ethnocentrism and xenophobia as manifestations of prejudice. This analysis sets the stage for a deeper understanding of the intricate dynamics of race, racism, and racial discrimination in subsequent chapters.
Sociological surveys have shown that social distance towards Lithuanian-Russians (the so-called “ethnic Russian minority” in Lithuania) is rather marginal or non-existent. This paper presents a pilot study at Vilnius schools (n=151), which used the verbal guise technique to investigate subconscious language attitudes towards Lithuanian (i) with Vilnius speech traits, (ii) with a Lithuanian-Russian accent, and (iii) with a Scandinavian accent – an accent presumed unfamiliar to the study participants. Half of the participants were also informed of the speaker’s profession to assess if it can reverse their attitudes. The main findings of the study show that speakers with a Lithuanian-Russian accent are perceived as less interesting, less educated, less trustworthy, and older. These results put into question the notion of absent social distance towards Lithuanian-Russians, highlighting the need for further research on this topic.
Although compromising the largest racioethnic minority population, the experiences of Latinx women employees has remained largely unexplored. The purpose of this article is to introduce the Latinx women Critical Theory framework to organizational researchers and discuss potential avenues of expansion in the field. The article highlights various studies conducted in the legal and education fields that have used the Latinx women Critical Theory framework. In addition, research on the perceptions of the Latinx women community have been synthesized. This helps us to understand the current research state and identify future research gaps. We believe that Latinx women Critical Theory can be used in organizational settings as a guide for researchers to understand and interpret the Latinx women workplace experience. Due to the scant amount of research on this population, the proposed framework can be used as a starting point for developing a research agenda on this topic.
This study explores the critical role of effective English communication for low-cost airlines in countries such as Thailand, which relies heavily on tourism and where English proficiency among the local population is limited. Specifically, this study focuses on intercultural communication challenges Thai ground staff face due to their restricted English ability, language-related anxiety, and perceived language barriers. The study uncovers the impact of foreign language anxiety on communication barriers with international passengers through 15 focus group discussions involving 128 ground staff from a premium low-cost Thai airline. The analysis identifies specific challenges stemming from foreign language anxiety, including difficulties in English pronunciation, unclear information delivery, and increased effort required to comprehend international passengers. The study proposes potential solutions to address these obstacles, such as incorporating mindfulness techniques into corporate training sessions for English language proficiency. This unique approach aims to help Thai ground staff overcome language barriers, facilitate effective communication, and improve customer service with international passengers by instilling a positive mindset and behavior towards English. Furthermore, the study emphasizes the importance of addressing these challenges for operational efficiency, passenger safety, and resource optimization in international air travel, where English is the primary language. Implementing these solutions can enhance intercultural communication and provide a more inclusive and satisfactory travel experience for all parties involved.
This volume illustrates new trends in corpus linguistics and shows how corpus approaches can be used to investigate new datasets and emerging areas in linguistics and related fields. It addresses innovative research questions, for example how prosodic analyses can increase the accuracy of syntactic segmentation, how tolerant English language teachers are about language variation, or how natural language can be translated into corpus query language. The thematic scope encompasses four types of ‘boundary crossings’. These include the incorporation of innovative scientific methods, specifically new statistical techniques, acoustic analysis and stylistic investigations. Additionally, temporal boundaries are crossed through the use of new methods and corpora to study diachronic data. New methodologies are also explored through the analysis of prosody, variety-specific approaches, and teacher attitudes. Finally, corpus users can cross boundaries by employing a more user-friendly corpus query language.
Tulving characterized semantic memory as a vast repository of meaning that underlies language and many other cognitive processes. This perspective on lexical and conceptual knowledge galvanized a new era of research undertaken by numerous fields, each with their own idiosyncratic methods and terminology. For example, “concept” has different meanings in philosophy, linguistics, and psychology. As such, many fundamental constructs used to delineate semantic theories remain underspecified and/or opaque. Weak construct specificity is among the leading causes of the replication crisis now facing psychology and related fields. Term ambiguity hinders cross-disciplinary communication, falsifiability, and incremental theory-building. Numerous cognitive subdisciplines (e.g., vision, affective neuroscience) have recently addressed these limitations via the development of consensus-based guidelines and definitions. The project to follow represents our effort to produce a multidisciplinary semantic glossary consisting of succinct definitions, background, principled dissenting views, ratings of agreement, and subjective confidence for 17 target constructs (e.g., abstractness, abstraction, concreteness, concept, embodied cognition, event semantics, lexical-semantic, modality, representation, semantic control, semantic feature, simulation, semantic distance, semantic dimension) . We discuss potential benefits and pitfalls (e.g., implicit bias, prescriptiveness) of these efforts to specify a common nomenclature that other researchers might index in specifying their own theoretical perspectives (e.g., They said X, but I mean Y).
Interacting with speakers of different accents is a prevalent global phenomenon. Given the considerable influence of accents in daily life, it is important to conduct a comprehensive review of listeners’ accent attitudes. This paper provides an integrative summary of research on accent attitudes, drawing from the Affective, Behavioral, and Cognitive (ABC) perspectives. We begin by outlining the social meaning of accents and laying out the theoretical foundations of the ABC approach. Then, we organize and integrate existing research findings using the ABC framework. Next, we illustrate how the perspectives intersect by discussing pertinent research findings. Drawing from various sociocultural contexts over many years, this review underscores the significant impact of accents on people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. The review concludes by discussing limitations, proposing future directions, highlighting real-world relevance, and suggesting areas for research expansion.
Bu çalışmada Türkçeyi yabancı dil olarak öğrenen temel düzeydeki Arapça
konuşurlarının sesli okuma ve konuşma etkinlikleri sırasında yapmış oldukları sesletim hatalarını tespit etmek; bu hataları ana dili etkisi, cinsiyet ve yaş değişkenleri ekseninde incelemek amaçlanmıştır. Araştırmanın katılımcıları benzeşik (homojen) örnekleme yöntemiyle seçilen, Azez ve Afrin Yunus Emre Türk Kültür Merkezlerindeki temel düzey kurslarında Türkçe öğrenen 91 öğreniciden oluşmaktadır. Çalışmada ana dilinin yanı sıra yaş ve cinsiyet değişkenlerinin sesletim becerisindeki etkisini tespit etmek amaçlandığından araştırmaya 58 yetişkin (32 erkek-26 kadın) ve 33 çocuk (18 erkek-15 kız) katılım göstermiştir. Parçalı-parçalarüstü birimlerdeki sesletim hatalarını tespit edebilmek için okuma metinleri, ana dili konuşurları (6 yetişkin-6 çocuk) tarafından da sesletilmiştir.
Yabancı dil öğrenicilerinin hedef dil konuşurlarıyla iletişime geçmesinin yolu; anlaşılır,
akıcı ve doğru konuşma becerisinden geçer. Bu sebeple Diller İçin Avrupa Ortak
Başvuru Metni’nde (D-AOBM), sesletim becerisinin kazandırılmasına yönelik
kazanımlar konuşma dilinin nitel özellikleri ve sesbilimsel denetim ölçeği başlığı
altında sunulmuştur. Buna göre öğrenici hedef dilin seslerini ancak C2 düzeyinde
açıklık ve netlikle sesletebilir hâle gelmektedir. Ancak bireylerin temel düzeyden
itibaren hedef dilin parçalı-parçalarüstü özelliklerini sınırlı alanda da olsa
kullanabileceğine yönelik kazanımlara da yer verilmiştir. Söz konusu sesletim
kazanımlarının öğrenici tarafından elde edilip edilmediğinin anlaşılmasının yolu; geçerli ve güvenilir araştırmalarla mümkündür. Bu sebeple temel düzey Türkçe öğretimi setlerinden seçilen 12 okuma metni ve 4 bağımsız konuşma sorusu öğrenicilere sunulmuş, öğrenicilerin sesli okuma ve konuşma performansları kayıt altına alınmıştır.
Verilerin incelenmesinde Praat (Boersma ve Weenink, 2024) ses analizi programından yararlanılmıştır. Öğrenicilerin ve ana dili konuşurlarının ses kayıtlarından elde edilen veriler, Python programlama diliyle grafikleştirilmiş; nitel araştırma desenlerinden betimsel analiz ve içerik analiziyle incelenerek yorumlanmıştır. Araştırma sonucunda öğrenicilerin parçalı birimlerdeki sesletim hatalarının kritik dönem hipotezini destekleyecek nitelikte olduğu tespit edilmiştir. Çocukların farklı nitelikteki ünlüler ve ünsüzlerle kurulan hece birliklerini sesletmekte yetişkinlerden daha başarılı olduğu ancak cinsiyet değişkeni açısından incelendiğinde yetişkinlerde erkeklerin, çocuklarda ise kızların Türkçenin sesbirimlerini üretmekte daha az güçlük yaşadığı bulgusuna ulaşılmıştır. Ana dili engeli açısından analiz edildiğinde ise öğrenicilerin ana dilinin fonetik envanterinde bulunmayan seslerden sırasıyla en çok /ü/, daha sonra /ö/, akabinde /ı/ ve son olarak /o/ ile kurulan hece birliklerini üretmekte sorun yaşadığı görülmüştür. Ayrıca öğreniciler, Türkçe sözcük ve cümle vurgularında da ana dilinden olumsuz aktarımlar yapmıştır. Öğrenicilerin sosyal olarak anlaşılır düzeyde aksan hedefine ulaşabilmesi ve iletişim engellerini aşabilmesi amacıyla öğreticilere, program tasarlayıcılara ve araştırmacılara öneriler sunulmuştur.
Evidence from Canada suggests that accent bias can be moderated by speakers' demonstrated job-relevant performance and the prestige level of their occupation (Teló et al. 2022). In this study, we replicated Teló et al.'s (2022) work in Brazil. First language (L1) Brazilian Portuguese-speaking listeners rated audio recordings of L1 Brazilian Portuguese and L1 Spanish speakers along continua capturing one professional (competence), one experiential (treatment preference), and one linguistic (comprehensibility) dimension. Our findings challenge the notion of consistent bias, as listeners did not uniformly perceive L1 Brazilian Portuguese speakers as more competent and comprehensible than L1 Spanish speakers, and, in fact, generally preferred treatment provided by L1 Spanish speakers. Complex interactions provided a nuanced account of listeners' evaluations, revealing, among other patterns, that demonstrated performance level and job prestige affected the evaluated dimensions differently depending on the speaker's L1. This replication further expands the initial study by examining the role of four listener variables as predictors of speaker ratings. Greater listener familiarity with the context depicted in the script was associated with the assignment of higher ratings overall.
In daily life, we frequently encounter false claims in the form of consumer advertisements, political propaganda, and rumors. Repetition may be one way that insidious misconceptions, such as the belief that vitamin C prevents the common cold, enter our knowledge base. Research on the illusory truth effect demonstrates that repeated statements are easier to process, and subsequently perceived to be more truthful, than new statements. The prevailing assumption in the literature has been that knowledge constrains this effect (i.e., repeating the statement "The Atlantic Ocean is the largest ocean on Earth" will not make you believe it). We tested this assumption using both normed estimates of knowledge and individuals' demonstrated knowledge on a postexperimental knowledge check (Experiment 1). Contrary to prior suppositions, illusory truth effects occurred even when participants knew better. Multinomial modeling demonstrated that participants sometimes rely on fluency even if knowledge is also available to them (Experiment 2). Thus, participants demonstrated knowledge neglect, or the failure to rely on stored knowledge, in the face of fluent processing experiences. (PsycINFO Database Record
(c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).
This study examined the effect of regional accent on the attribution of guilt. One hundred and nineteen participants listened to a recorded exchange between a British male criminal suspect and a male policeman. Employing the “matched-guise” technique, this exchange was varied to produce a 2 (accent type: Birmingham/standard) 2 (race of suspect: Black/White) 2 (crime type: blue collar/white collar) independent-groups design. The results suggested that the suspect was rated as significantly more guilty when he employed a Birmingham rather than a standard accent and that attributions of guilt were significantly associated with the suspect’s perceived superiority and social attractiveness.
The influence of memory on the subjective experience of later events was investigated in two experiments. In one experiment, previously heard sentences and new sentences were presented against a background of white noise that varied in intensity. In a second experiment, a cue set of words was presented either before or after a target set that was embedded in noise. The cue set was either the same as or different from the target set. In both experiments, one of the tasks was to judge the loudness of the noise. The data show that subjects were unable to discount the contribution of memory to perception when judging the noise level. Subjects appeared to base their noise judgments on ease of interpretation of the message presented through noise, with differences in ease being misattributed to a difference in noise level. The advantages of subjective experience as a measure of memory, and the role of subjective experience and misattribution in confusions between cognitive and physical deficits are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Is there a difference between believing and merely understanding an idea? R. Descartes (e.g., 1641 [1984]) thought so. He considered the acceptance and rejection of an idea to be alternative outcomes of an effortful assessment process that occurs subsequent to the automatic comprehension of that idea. This article examined B. Spinoza's (1982) alternative suggestion that (1) the acceptance of an idea is part of the automatic comprehension of that idea and (2) the rejection of an idea occurs subsequent to, and more effortfully than, its acceptance. In this view, the mental representation of abstract ideas is quite similar to the mental representation of physical objects: People believe in the ideas they comprehend, as quickly and automatically as they believe in the objects they see. Research in social and cognitive psychology suggests that Spinoza's model may be a more accurate account of human belief than is that of Descartes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Feelings of familiarity are not direct products of memory. Although prior experience of a stimulus can produce a feeling of familiarity, that feeling can also be aroused in the absence of prior experience if perceptual processing of the stimulus is fluent (e.g., B. W. Whittlesea et al, 1990). This suggests that feelings of familiarity arise through an unconscious inference about the source of processing fluency. The present experiments extend that conclusion. First, they show that a wide variety of feelings about the past are controlled by a fluency heuristic, including feelings about the meaning, pleasantness, duration, and recency of past events. Second, they demonstrate that the attribution process does not rely only on perceptual fluency, but can be influenced even more by the fluency of conceptual processing. Third, they show that although the fluency heuristic itself is simple, people's use of it is highly sophisticated and makes them robustly sensitive to the actual historical status of current events. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
HYPOTHESIZES THAT MERE REPEATED EXPOSURE OF THE INDIVIDUAL TO A STIMULUS OBJECT ENHANCES HIS ATTITUDE TOWARD IT. BY "MERE" EXPOSURE IS MEANT A CONDITION MAKING THE STIMULUS ACCESSIBLE TO PERCEPTION. SUPPORT FOR THE HYPOTHESIS CONSISTS OF 4 TYPES OF EVIDENCE, PRESENTED AND REVIEWED: (1) THE CORRELATION BETWEEN AFFECTIVE CONNOTATION OF WORDS AND WORD FREQUENCY, (2) THE EFFECT OF EXPERIMENTALLY MANIPULATED FREQUENCY OF EXPOSURE UPON THE AFFECTIVE CONNOTATION OF NONSENSE WORDS AND SYMBOLS, (3) THE CORRELATION BETWEEN WORD FREQUENCY AND THE ATTITUDE TO THEIR REFERENTS, AND (4) THE EFFECTS OF EXPERIMENTALLY MANIPULATED FREQUENCY OF EXPOSURE ON ATTITUDE. THE RELEVANCE FOR THE EXPOSURE-ATTITUDE HYPOTHESIS OF THE EXPLORATION THEORY AND OF THE SEMANTIC SATIATION FINDINGS WERE EXAMINED. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).
In this study, a sentence verification task was used to determine the effect of a foreign accent on sentence processing time. Twenty native English listeners heard a set of English true/false statements uttered by ten native speakers of English and ten native speakers of Mandarin. The listeners assessed the truth value of the statements, and assigned accent and comprehensibility ratings. Response latency data indicated that the Mandarin-accented utterances required more time to evaluate than the utterances of the native English speakers. Furthermore, utterances that were assigned low comprehensibility ratings tended to take longer to process than moderately or highly comprehensible utterances. However, there was no evidence that degree of accent was related to processing time. The results are discussed in terms of the "costs" of speaking with a foreign accent, and the relevance of such factors as accent and comprehensibility to second language teaching.
We propose that aesthetic pleasure is a function of the perceiver's processing dynamics: The more fluently perceivers can process an object, the more positive their aesthetic response. We review variables known to influence aesthetic judgments, such as figural goodness, figure-ground contrast, stimulus repetition, symmetry, and prototypicality, and trace their effects to changes in processing fluency. Other variables that influence processing fluency, like visual or semantic priming, similarly increase judgments of aesthetic pleasure. Our proposal provides an integrative framework for the study of aesthetic pleasure and sheds light on the interplay between early preferences versus cultural influences on taste, preferences for both prototypical and abstracted forms, and the relation between beauty and truth. In contrast to theories that trace aesthetic pleasure to objective stimulus features per se, we propose that beauty is grounded in the processing experiences of the perceiver, which are in part a function of stimulus properties.
Repeated statements receive higher truth ratings than new statements. Given that repetition leads to greater experienced processing fluency, the author proposes that fluency is used in truth judgments according to its ecological validity. Thus, the truth effect occurs because people learn that fluency and truth tend to be positively correlated. Three experiments tested this notion. Experiment 1 replicated the truth effect by directly manipulating processing fluency; Experiment 2 reversed the effect by manipulating the correlation between fluency and truth in a learning phase. Experiment 3 generalized this reversal by showing a transfer of a negative correlation between perceptual fluency (due to color contrast) and truth to truth judgments when fluency is due to prior exposure (i.e., repetition).
In daily decision making, people often solicit one another's opinions in the hope of improving their own judgment. According to both theory and empirical results, integrating even a few opinions is beneficial, with the accuracy gains diminishing as the bias of the judges or the correlation between their opinions increases. Decision makers using intuitive policies for integrating others’ opinions rely on a variety of accuracy cues in weighting the opinions they receive. They tend to discount dissenters and to give greater weight to their own opinion than to other people's opinions.
The influence of memory on the subjective experience of later events was investigated in two experiments. In one experiment, previously heard sentences and new sentences were presented against a background of white noise that varied in intensity. In a second experiment, a cue set of words was presented either before or after a target set that was embedded in noise. The cue set was either the same as or different from the target set. In both experiments, one of the tasks was to judge the loudness of the noise. The data show that subjects were unable to discount the contribution of memory to perception when judging the noise level. Subjects appeared to base their noise judgments on ease of interpretation of the message presented through noise, with differences in ease being misattributed to a difference in noise level. The advantages of subjective experience as a measure of memory, and the role of subjective experience and misattribution in confusions between cognitive and physical deficits are discussed.
Feelings of familiarity are not direct products of memory. Although prior experience of a stimulus can produce a feeling of familiarity, that feeling can also be aroused in the absence of prior experience if perceptual processing of the stimulus is fluent (e.g., Whittlesea, Jacoby, & Girard, 1990). This suggests that feelings of familiarity arise through an unconscious inference about the source of processing fluency. The present experiments extend that conclusion. First, they show that a wide variety of feelings about the past are controlled by a fluency heuristic, including feelings about the meaning, pleasantness, duration, and recency of past events. Second, they demonstrate that the attribution process does not rely only on perceptual fluency, but can be influenced even more by the fluency of conceptual processing. Third, they show that although the fluency heuristic itself is simple, people's use of it is highly sophisticated and makes them robustly sensitive to the actual historical status of current events.
Low processing fluency fosters the impression that a stimulus is unfamiliar, which in turn results in perceptions of higher risk, independent of whether the risk is desirable or undesirable. In Studies 1 and 2, ostensible food additives were rated as more harmful when their names were difficult to pronounce than when their names were easy to pronounce; mediation analyses indicated that this effect was mediated by the perceived novelty of the substance. In Study 3, amusement-park rides were rated as more likely to make one sick (an undesirable risk) and also as more exciting and adventurous (a desirable risk) when their names were difficult to pronounce than when their names were easy to pronounce.
Low processing fluency fosters the impression that a stimulus is unfamiliar, which in turn results in perceptions of higher risk, independent of whether the risk is desirable or undesirable. In Studies 1 and 2, ostensible food additives were rated as more harmful when their names were difficult to pronounce than when their names were easy to pronounce; mediation analyses indicated that this effect was mediated by the perceived novelty of the substance. In Study 3, amusement-park rides were rated as more likely to make one sick (an undesirable risk) and also as more exciting and adventurous (a desirable risk) when their names were difficult to pronounce than when their names were easy to pronounce.
Humans continuously evaluate aspects of their environment (people, objects, places) in an automatic fashion (i.e., unintentionally, rapidly). Such evaluations can be highly adaptive, triggering behavioral responses away from threats and toward rewards in the environment. Even in the absence of immediate threats and fleeting rewards, the ability to automatically evaluate aspects of the environment enables individuals to effortlessly make sense of their world without depleting limited and valuable cognitive resources. We discuss two lines of research on automatic evaluation: The first demonstrates that people can evaluate a stimulus even when they are not conscious of the stimulus and thus unaware of having evaluated it. The second line of work shows that even when people are conscious of a stimulus, they may evaluate it without intending to do so. We end by discussing current theoretical questions regarding this topic.
Experiments were designed to produce illusions of immediate memory and of perception, in order to demonstrate that subjective experience of familiarity and perceptual quality may rely on an unconscious attribution process. Subjects saw a short and rapidly presented list of words, then pronounced and judged a target word. We influenced the fluency of pronouncing the target through independent manipulation of repetition and visual clarity. Judgments of repetition were influenced by clarity (Experiments 1 and 2), but not when subjects knew that clarity was manipulated (Experiment 3). Conversely, judgments of clarity were influenced by repetition (Experiment 4). We interpret these symmetric illusions to mean that fluent performance is unconsciously attributed to whatever source is apparent and that feelings of familiarity and perceptual quality result when fluency is attributed respectively to past experience or current circumstances.
Human reasoning is accompanied by metacognitive experiences, most notably the ease or difficulty of recall and thought generation and the fluency with which new information can be processed. These experiences are informative in their own right. They can serve as a basis of judgment in addition to, or at the expense of, declarative information and can qualify the conclusions drawn from recalled content. What exactly people conclude from a given metacognitive experience depends on the naive theory of mental processes they bring to bear, rendering the outcomes highly variable. The obtained judgments cannot be predicted on the basis of accessible declarative information alone; we cannot understand human judgment without taking into account the interplay of declarative and experiential information.
Low processing fluency fosters the impression that a stimulus is unfamiliar, which in turn results in perceptions of higher risk, independent of whether the risk is desirable or undesirable. In Studies 1 and 2, ostensible food additives were rated as more harmful when their names were difficult to pronounce than when their names were easy to pronounce; mediation analyses indicated that this effect was mediated by the perceived novelty of the substance. In Study 3, amusement-park rides were rated as more likely to make one sick (an undesirable risk) and also as more exciting and adventurous (a desirable risk) when their names were difficult to pronounce than when their names were easy to pronounce.
In many situations, quantity estimates from multiple experts or diagnostic instruments must be collected and combined. Normatively, and all else equal, one should value information sources that are nonredundant, in the sense that correlation in forecast errors should be minimized. Past research on the preference for redundancy has been inconclusive. While some studies have suggested that people correctly place higher value on uncorrelated inputs when collecting estimates, others have shown that people either ignore correlation or, in some cases, even prefer it. The present experiments show that the preference for redundancy depends on one's intuitive theory of information. The most common intuitive theory identified is the Error Tradeoff Model (ETM), which explicitly distinguishes between measurement error and bias. According to ETM, measurement error can only be averaged out by consulting the same source multiple times (normatively false), and bias can only be averaged out by consulting different sources (normatively true). As a result, ETM leads people to prefer redundant estimates when the ratio of measurement error to bias is relatively high. Other participants favored different theories. Some adopted the normative model, while others were reluctant to mathematically average estimates from different sources in any circumstance. In a post hoc analysis, science majors were more likely than others to subscribe to the normative model. While tentative, this result lends insight into how intuitive theories might develop and also has potential ramifications for how statistical concepts such as correlation might best be learned and internalized.
Statements of the form "Osorno is in Chile" were presented in colors that made them easy or difficult to read against a white background and participants judged the truth of the statement. Moderately visible statements were judged as true at chance level, whereas highly visible statements were judged as true significantly above chance level. We conclude that perceptual fluency affects judgments of truth.
We explored the role that poetic form can play in people's perceptions of the accuracy of aphorisms as descriptions of human behavior. Participants judged the ostensible accuracy of unfamiliar aphorisms presented in their textually surviving form or a semantically equivalent modified form. Extant rhyming aphorisms in their original form (e.g., "What sobriety conceals, alcohol reveals") were judged to be more accurate than modified versions that did not preserve rhyme ("What sobriety conceals, alcohol unmasks"). However, the perceived truth advantage of rhyming aphorisms over their modified forms was attenuated when people were cautioned to distinguish aphorisms' poetic qualities from their semantic content. Our results suggest that rhyme, like repetition, affords statements an enhancement in processing fluency that can be misattributed to heightened conviction about their truthfulness.
Fluency - the subjective experience of ease or difficulty associated with completing a mental task - has been shown to be an influential cue in a wide array of judgments. Recently researchers have begun to look at how fluency impacts judgment through more subtle and indirect routes. Fluency impacts whether information is represented in working memory and what aspects of that information are attended to. Additionally, fluency has an impact in strategy selection; depending on how fluent information is, people engage in qualitatively different cognitive operations. This suggests that the role of fluency is more nuanced than previously believed and that understanding fluency could be of critical importance to understanding cognition more generally.
Attitudinal effects of mere exposurexxx Please cite this article as: Why don't we believe non-native speakers? The influence of accent on credibility
- R B Zajonc
- S Lev-Ari
- B Keysar
- S Lev-Ari
- B Keysar
Zajonc, R. B. (1968). Attitudinal effects of mere exposure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Monograph Supplement, 9, 1−27. 4 S. Lev-Ari, B. Keysar / Journal of Experimental Social Psychology xxx (2010) xxx–xxx Please cite this article as: Lev-Ari, S., & Keysar, B., Why don't we believe non-native speakers? The influence of accent on credibility, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (2010), doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2010.05.025
Birds of a feather flock conjointly(?):Rhyme as reason in aphorisms The effect of variations in nonfluency on audience ratings of source credibility
- M S Mcglone
- J Tofighbakhsh
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Automatic evaluation How mental systems believe Memory influences subjective experience: Noise judgments
- M Zayas
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Processing fluency and aesthetic pleasure: Is beauty in the perceiver's processing experience? Personality and Social Psychology Review Meta-cognitive experiences in consumer judgment and decision making
- R Reber
- N Schwarz
- P Winkielman
Reber, R., Schwarz, N., & Winkielman, P. (2004). Processing fluency and aesthetic pleasure: Is beauty in the perceiver's processing experience? Personality and Social Psychology Review, 8(4), 364−382. Schwarz, N. (2004). Meta-cognitive experiences in consumer judgment and decision making. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 14, 332−348.
Attitudinal effects of mere exposure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
- Zajonc
November) Prior knowledge does not protect against illusory truth effects
- K Fazio
- E J Marsh