10,499 research outputs found

    Influences of Accent and Ethnic Background on Perceptions of Eyewitness Testimony

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    The purpose of the present work was to investigate the effect two eyewitness factors, accent and ethnic background, have on the perceived favorability of eyewitness testimony and case disposition in criminal trials. Six variations of testimony were created and videotaped. The videotapes varied by accent and ethnic background of the eyewitness; the testimony text was identical. Four eyewitness favorability variables, a) credibility, b) judgment of accuracy, c) deceptiveness, and d) prestige, as well as their relationship to case disposition, were measured. One hundred seventy-four undergraduate participants viewed one of the six videotapes. Results indicate that there was a significant main effect of accent for the four eyewitness favorability variables. Accent by ethnic background interactions also yielded significant findings for the four variables as well as for the defendant’s degree of guilt. Results were interpreted using the Elaboration Likelihood Model. The potential importance of these results for judicial settings is discussed

    A neural marker for social bias toward in-group accents

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    Accents provide information about the speaker's geographical, socio-economic, and ethnic background. Research in applied psychology and sociolinguistics suggests that we generally prefer our own accent to other varieties of our native language and attribute more positive traits to it. Despite the widespread influence of accents on social interactions, educational and work settings the neural underpinnings of this social bias toward our own accent and, what may drive this bias, are unexplored. We measured brain activity while participants from two different geographical backgrounds listened passively to 3 English accent types embedded in an adaptation design. Cerebral activity in several regions, including bilateral amygdalae, revealed a significant interaction between the participants' own accent and the accent they listened to: while repetition of own accents elicited an enhanced neural response, repetition of the other group's accent resulted in reduced responses classically associated with adaptation. Our findings suggest that increased social relevance of, or greater emotional sensitivity to in-group accents, may underlie the own-accent bias. Our results provide a neural marker for the bias associated with accents, and show, for the first time, that the neural response to speech is partly shaped by the geographical background of the listener

    Effects of Noise, Reverberation and Foreign Accent on Native and Non-Native Listeners’ Performance of English Speech Comprehension

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    A large number of non-native English speakers may be found in American classrooms, both as listeners and talkers. Little is known about how this population comprehends speech in realistic adverse acoustical conditions. A study was conducted to investigate the effects of background noise level (BNL), reverberation time (RT), and talker foreign accent on native and non-native listeners\u27 speech comprehension, while controlling for English language abilities. A total of 115 adult listeners completed comprehension tasks under 15 acoustic conditions: three BNLs (RC-30, RC-40, and RC-50) and five RTs (from 0.4 to 1.2 s). Fifty-six listeners were tested with speech from native English-speaking talkers and 59 with native Mandarin-Chinese-speaking talkers. Results show that, while higher BNLs were generally more detrimental to listeners with lower English proficiency, all listeners experienced significant comprehension deficits above RC-40 with native English talkers. This limit was lower (i.e., above RC-30), however, with Chinese talkers. For reverberation, non-native listeners as a group performed best with RT up to 0.6 s, while native listeners performed equally well up to 1.2 s. A matched foreign accent benefit has also been identified, where the negative impact of higher reverberation does not exist for non-native listeners who share the talker\u27s native language

    Cross-linguistic Influences on Sentence Accent Detection in Background Noise.

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    This paper investigates whether sentence accent detection in a non-native language is dependent on (relative) similarity between prosodic cues to accent between the non-native and the native language, and whether cross-linguistic differences in the use of local and more widely distributed (i.e., non-local) cues to sentence accent detection lead to differential effects of the presence of background noise on sentence accent detection in a non-native language. We compared Dutch, Finnish, and French non-native listeners of English, whose cueing and use of prosodic prominence is gradually further removed from English, and compared their results on a phoneme monitoring task in different levels of noise and a quiet condition to those of native listeners. Overall phoneme detection performance was high for the native and the non-native listeners, but deteriorated to the same extent in the presence of background noise. Crucially, relative similarity between the prosodic cues to sentence accent of one's native language compared to that of a non-native language does not determine the ability to perceive and use sentence accent for speech perception in that non-native language. Moreover, proficiency in the non-native language is not a straightforward predictor of sentence accent perception performance, although high proficiency in a non-native language can seemingly overcome certain differences at the prosodic level between the native and non-native language. Instead, performance is determined by the extent to which listeners rely on local cues (English and Dutch) versus cues that are more distributed (Finnish and French), as more distributed cues survive the presence of background noise better

    Native Speaker Perceptions of Accented Speech: The English Pronunciation of Macedonian EFL Learners

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    The paper reports on the results of a study that aimed to describe the vocalic and consonantal features of the English pronunciation of Macedonian EFL learners as perceived by native speakers of English and to find out whether native speakers who speak different standard variants of English perceive the same segments as non-native. A specially designed computer web application was employed to gather two types of data: a) quantitative (frequency of segment variables and global foreign accent ratings on a 5-point scale), and b) qualitative (open-ended questions). The result analysis points out to three most frequent markers of foreign accent in the English speech of Macedonian EFL learners: final obstruent devoicing, vowel shortening and substitution of English dental fricatives with Macedonian dental plosives. It also reflects additional phonetic aspects poorly explained in the available reference literature such as allophonic distributional differences between the two languages and intonational mismatch

    Investigating the impact of unfamiliar speaker accent on auditory comprehension in adults with aphasia

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    Background: In an increasingly multicultural society, all individuals are likely to come into contact with speakers with unfamiliar accents. Recent figures suggest that such accent variation may be particularly apparent within the healthcare workforce. Research on accent variation has demonstrated that an unfamiliar speaker accent can affect listener comprehension, but the impact of speaker accent on the comprehension skills of listeners with neurological impairment has not been widely explored.Aims: To investigate the effect of an unfamiliar accent on the sentence comprehension of individuals with aphasia following stroke.Methods & Procedures: The impact of two different accents (south-east England and Nigerian) on accuracy and response time for 16 individuals with aphasia and 16 healthy control subjects was measured. Participants were presented with a computerized sentence-to-picture matching task and their accuracy and response times were recorded.Outcomes & Results: Results showed that individuals with aphasia made significantly more errors in comprehension of sentences spoken in an unfamiliar accent than in a familiar accent, a finding that was not demonstrated by the control group when outliers were excluded. Individuals with aphasia were slower overall; however, response times did not show significant effects of speaker accent for either group.Conclusions & Implications: The impact of speaker accent should be considered in the rehabilitation of individuals with aphasia following stroke. Clinical implications include the possibility of underestimating an individual's language abilities on assessment, and the potential errors in comprehension that may occur

    Linguistic dimensions of second language accent and comprehensibility:Nonnative listeners' perspectives

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    The current study investigated the effect of listener status (native, nonnative) and language background (French, Mandarin) on global ratings of second language speech. Twenty-six nonnative English listeners representing the two language backgrounds (n = 13 each) rated the comprehensibility and accentedness of 40 French speakers of English. These same speakers were previously rated by native listeners and coded for 19 linguistic measures of speech (e.g., segmental errors, word stress errors, grammar accuracy) in Trofimovich and Isaacs (2012). Analyses indicated no difference in global ratings between nonnative and native listeners, or between the two nonnative listener groups. Similarly, no major differences in the linguistic dimensions associated with each group’s ratings existed. However, analyses of verbal reports for a subset of nonnative listeners (n = 5 per group) demonstrated that each group attributed their ratings to somewhat different linguistic cues

    Listener Background in L2 Speech Evaluation

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    Listeners are integral parts of second language (L2) oral performance assessment. However, evaluation of listeners is susceptible to listener background variables and biases. These variables and preexisting biases distort native speaker (NS) listeners’ perceptions of non-native speakers’ (NNSs) speech performance and contribute errors into their oral performance assessment. Among listener background variables, listeners’ first language status, the amount of exposure to different English varieties, listeners’ educational background, prior language teaching experience, NNSs’ linguistic stereotyping, and listener attitude have been investigated in the literature and assumed to exert sizable amount of variation in speakers’ oral proficiency true scores. To minimize listeners’ bias in the assessment context, listeners are provided with intensive training programs in which they are trained how to rate NNSs’ speech more objectively utilizing scoring rubrics. To mediate listeners’ bias in social contexts, the literature has provided strands of evidence in favor of structured intergroup contact programs, which are inoculations particularly devised to improve NSs’ attitude, thereby making them more receptive to NNSs’ English varieties. To enhance L2 listeners’ self-efficacy and foster their autonomy, L2 instructors are encouraged to emphasize explicit instruction of listening strategies
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