Identifying Targets of Communication Styles: An Exploratory Study

The present study investigated the identification of communication styles. Native and foreign adult judges viewed 60 audiovisual clips of women who were instructing one of four listeners: a child, a foreign adult speaker, a mentally retarded adult, or a native adult speaker of normal intelligence. The judges were asked to identify the listener in each clip. Overall, native judges were more accurate than foreign judges at identifying the listeners. In addition, more listeners were accurately identified by the native and foreign judges when the listener was a child or a normal native adult speaker Systematic errors suggest that accuracy in judgments may be influenced by similar and overlapping linguistic and paralinguistic features contained in the special communication styles and previous expectations about the listener groups.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/68964/2/10.1177_0146167293192011.pd