Listeners use more than just acoustic information when processing speech. Social information, such as a speaker’s perceived race or ethnicity, can also affect the processing of the speech signal, in some cases facilitating perception (“social priming”). We aimed to replicate and extend this line of inquiry, examining effects of multiple social primes (i.e., a Middle Eastern, White, or East Asian face, or a control silhouette image) on the perception of Mandarin Chinese-accented English and Arabic-accented English. By including uncommon priming combinations (e.g., a Middle Eastern prime for a Mandarin accent), we aimed to test the specificity of social primes: For example, can a Middle Eastern face facilitate perception of both Arabic-accented English and Mandarin-accented English? Contrary to our predictions, our results indicated no facilitative social priming effects for either of the second language (L2) accents. Results for our examination of specificity were mixed. Trends in the data indicated that the combination of an East Asian prime with Arabic accent resulted in lower accuracy as compared with a White prime, but the combination of a Middle Eastern prime with a Mandarin accent did not (and may have actually benefited listeners to some degree). We conclude that the specificity of priming effects may depend on listeners’ level of familiarity with a given accent and/or racial/ethnic group and that the mixed outcomes in the current work motivate further inquiries to determine whether social priming effects for L2-accented speech may be smaller than previously hypothesized and/or highly dependent on listener experience.
Anwyl-IrvineA. L.MassonniéJ.FlittonA.KirkhamN.EvershedJ. K. (2020). Gorilla in our midst: An online behavioral experiment builder. Behavior Research Methods, 52(1), 388–407.
2.
BabelM.JohnsonK. A.SenC. (2021). Asymmetries in perceptual adjustments to non-canonical pronunciations. Laboratory Phonology, 12(1), 19.
3.
BabelM.RussellJ. (2015). Expectations and speech intelligibility. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 137(5), 2823–2833.
4.
BanksB.GowenE.MunroK. J.AdankP. (2015). Audiovisual cues benefit recognition of accented speech in noise but not perceptual adaptation. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 9, Article 422.
5.
BentT.HoltR. F.MillerK.LiberskyE. (2019). Sentence context facilitation for children’s and adults’ recognition of native- and nonnative-accented speech. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research: JSLHR, 62(2), 423–433.
6.
BorrieS. A.BarrettT. S.YohoS. E. (2019). Autoscore: An open-source automated tool for scoring listener perception of speech. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 145(1), 392–399.
BradlowA. R.AlexanderJ. A. (2007). Semantic and phonetic enhancements for speech-in-noise recognition by native and non-native listeners. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 121(4), 2339–2349.
BrennanE. M.BrennanJ. S. (1981). Accent scaling and language attitudes: Reactions to Mexican American English speech. Language and Speech, 24(3), 207–221.
11.
BresnahanM. J.OhashiR.NebashiR.LiuW. Y.ShearmanS. M. (2002). Attitudinal and affective response toward accented English. Language & Communication, 22(2), 171–185.
ClarkeC. M.GarrettM. F. (2004). Rapid adaptation to foreign-accented English. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 116(6), 3647–3658.
14.
CraikF. I.KirsnerK. (1974). The effect of speaker’s voice on word recognition. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 26(2), 274–284.
15.
CuddyA. J.FiskeS. T.GlickP. (2007). The BIAS map: Behaviors from intergroup affect and stereotypes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92(4), 631–648.
16.
CuddyA. J.FiskeS. T.GlickP. (2008). Warmth and competence as universal dimensions of social perception: The stereotype content model and the BIAS map. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 40, 61–149.
17.
De MeoA. (2012). How credible is a non-native speaker? Prosody and surroundings. Methodological Perspectives on Second Language Prosody Papers from MLP, 2, 20123–20129.
18.
DragojevicM.GilesH. (2014). The reference frame effect: An intergroup perspective on language attitudes. Human Communication Research, 40(1), 91–111.
19.
DragojevicM.GilesH. (2016). I don’t like you because you’re hard to understand: The role of processing fluency in the language attitudes process. Human Communication Research, 42(3), 396–420.
20.
EimasP. D.CorbitJ. D. (1973). Selective adaptation of linguistic feature detectors. Cognitive Psychology, 4(1), 99–109.
21.
ElmanJ. L.McClellandJ. L. (1983). Exploiting lawful variability in the signal: The TRACE model of speech perception. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 74(S1), S68–S68.
GnevshevaK. (2018). Variation in foreign accent identification. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 39(8), 688–702.
24.
GoldingerS. D. (1996). Words and voices: Episodic traces in spoken word identification and recognition memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 22(5), 1166–1183.
25.
GoldingerS. D. (1998). Echoes of echoes? An episodic theory of lexical access. Psychological Review, 105(2), 251–279.
26.
GreenP.MacLeodC. J. (2016). SIMR: An R package for power analysis of generalized linear mixed models by simulation. Methods in Ecology and Evolution/British Ecological Society, 7(4), 493–498.
HanulíkováA. (2021). Do faces speak volumes? Social expectations in speech comprehension and evaluation across three age groups. PLOS ONE, 16(10), Article e0259230.
29.
HeatonH.NygaardL. C. (2011). Charm or harm: Effect of passage content on listener attitudes toward American English accents. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 30(2), 202–211.
30.
HintzmanD. L. (1984). MINERVA 2: A simulation model of human memory. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers, 16(2), 96–101.
31.
JohnsonK. (1997). Speech perception without speaker normalization: An exemplar model. In JohnsonK.MullenixJ. (Eds.), Talker variability in speech processing (pp. 145–166). Academic Press.
32.
JohnsonK.StrandE. A.D’ImperioM. (1999). Auditory–visual integration of talker gender in vowel perception. Journal of Phonetics, 27(4), 359–384.
33.
JoshiA.KaleS.ChandelS.PalD. K. (2015). Likert scale: Explored and explained. British Journal of Applied Science & Technology, 7(4), 396–403.
34.
KangO.RubinD. L. (2009). Reverse linguistic stereotyping: Measuring the effect of listener expectations on speech evaluation. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 28(4), 441–456.
35.
KleinschmidtD. F.JaegerT. F. (2015). Robust speech perception: Recognize the familiar, generalize to the similar, and adapt to the novel. Psychological Review, 122(2), 148.
36.
KleinschmidtD. F.WeatherholtzK.Florian JaegerT. (2018). Sociolinguistic perception as inference under uncertainty. Topics in Cognitive Science, 10(4), 818–834.
37.
KraljicT.SamuelA. G. (2005). Perceptual learning for speech: Is there a return to normal?Cognitive Psychology, 51(2), 141–178.
38.
KraljicT.SamuelA. G.BrennanS. E. (2008). First impressions and last resorts: How listeners adjust to speaker variability. Psychological Science, 19(4), 332–338.
39.
KrausM. W.TorrezB.ParkJ. W.GhayebiF. (2019). Evidence for the reproduction of social class in brief speech. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(46), 22998–23003.
40.
KutluE.TivM.WulffS.TitoneD. (2021). The impact of race on speech perception and accentedness judgements in racially diverse and non-diverse groups. Applied Linguistics, 43, 867–890.
41.
KutluE.TivM.WulffS.TitoneD. (2022). Does race impact speech perception? An account of accented speech in two different multilingual locales. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 7(1), 1–16.
42.
LadefogedP.BroadbentD. E. (1957). Information conveyed by vowels. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 29(1), 98–104.
43.
LeeB. J.BaileyJ. L. (2021). Effects of perceived race on comprehensibility, intelligibility, and accentedness ratings. In FergusonP.DerrahR. (Eds.), Reflections and new perspectives (pp. 251–257). JALT.
44.
LibermanA. M.CooperF. S.ShankweilerD. P.Studdert-KennedyM. (1967). Perception of the speech code. Psychological Review, 74(6), 431.
45.
LinM. H.KwanV. S.CheungA.FiskeS. T. (2005). Stereotype content model explains prejudice for an envied outgroup: Scale of anti-Asian American stereotypes. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31(1), 34–47.
46.
MaD. S.CorrellJ.WittenbrinkB. (2015). The Chicago face database: A free stimulus set of faces and norming data. Behavior Research Methods, 47, 1122–1135.
47.
MagnusonJ. S.NusbaumH. C.Akahane-YamadaR.SaltzmanD. (2021). Talker familiarity and the accommodation of talker variability. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 83, 1842–1860.
48.
McGowanK. B. (2015). Social expectation improves speech perception in noise. Language and Speech, 58(Pt. 4), 502–521.
49.
McLaughlinD. J.Baese-BerkM. M.BentT.BorrieS. A.Van EngenK. J. (2018). Coping with adversity: Individual differences in the perception of noisy and accented speech. Attention, Perception & Psychophysics, 80(6), 1559–1570.
50.
McLaughlinD. J.Van EngenK. J. (2020). Task-evoked pupil response for accurately recognized accented speech. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 147(2), EL151–EL156.
51.
MelguyY. V.JohnsonK. (2021). General adaptation to accented English: Speech intelligibility unaffected by perceived source of non-native accent. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 149(4), 2602–2614.
52.
MunroM. J.DerwingT. M. (1995). Foreign accent, comprehensibility, and intelligibility in the speech of second language learners. Language Learning, 45(1), 73–97.
53.
NewmanR. S.EversS. (2007). The effect of talker familiarity on stream segregation. Journal of Phonetics, 35(1), 85–103.
54.
NilssonM.SoliS. D.SullivanJ. A. (1994). Development of the Hearing in Noise Test for the measurement of speech reception thresholds in quiet and in noise. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 95(2), 1085–1099.
PalmeriT. J.GoldingerS. D.PisoniD. B. (1993). Episodic encoding of voice attributes and recognition memory for spoken words. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 19(2), 309–328.
57.
PierrehumbertJ. (2001). Lenition and contrast. Frequency and the Emergence of Linguistic Structure, 45, 137.
58.
RubinD. L. (1992). Nonlanguage factors affecting undergraduates’ judgments of nonnative English-speaking teaching assistants. Research in Higher Education, 33(4), 511–531.
59.
SamuelA. G. (2016). Lexical representations are malleable for about one second: Evidence for the non-automaticity of perceptual recalibration. Cognitive Psychology, 88, 88–114.
SidarasS. K.AlexanderJ. E.NygaardL. C. (2009). Perceptual learning of systematic variation in Spanish-accented speech. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 125(5), 3306–3316.
62.
StrandE. A. (1999). Uncovering the role of gender stereotypes in speech perception. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 18(1), 86–100.
63.
Van EngenK. J.PeelleJ. E. (2014). Listening effort and accented speech. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 8, Article 577.
64.
VaughnC. R. (2019). Expectations about the source of a speaker’s accent affect accent adaptation. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 145(5), 3218.
65.
XieX.TheodoreR. M.MyersE. B. (2017). More than a boundary shift: Perceptual adaptation to foreign-accented speech reshapes the internal structure of phonetic categories. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 43(1), 206–217.
66.
YiH. G.PhelpsJ. E.SmiljanicR.ChandrasekaranB. (2013). Reduced efficiency of audiovisual integration for nonnative speech. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 134(5), EL387–EL393.
67.
ZhengY.SamuelA. G. (2020). The relationship between phonemic category boundary changes and perceptual adjustments to natural accents. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 46(7), 1270.
68.
ZouL. X.CheryanS. (2017). Two axes of subordination: A new model of racial position. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 112(5), 696–717.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
