Eastern Kentucky University
Do Foreign Accents Influence the Perceived Difficulty of a Sentence?
Grade Level at Time of Presentation
Junior
Major
Psychology
KY House District #
073
KY Senate District #
34
Faculty Advisor/ Mentor
Sara Incera, PhD
Department
Dept. of Psychology
Abstract
Do Foreign Accents Influence the Perceived Difficulty of a Sentence?
Hannah Daugherty & Sara Incera
Multilingual Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Eastern Kentucky University
Everyone has an accent. Accents that are perceived as foreign can influence listeners’ ease of understanding and empathy. We examined whether a speaker's accent influenced the perceived difficulty of a sentence. In particular, whether sentences spoken by foreign-accented speakers were perceived as more difficult to understand. Our results indicated that, when listeners rate the difficulty of the sentence, they are influenced by the speaker’s accent. Listeners consistently rated sentences spoken by a foreign speaker as more difficult than sentences spoken by a native speaker, despite asking them to focus on the difficulty of the sentence itself. These results point to the conclusion that listeners are unable to disentangle between difficulties they are experiencing due to the speaker and difficulties they are experiencing due to the sentence. Implications of these findings can inform how diverse speakers are perceived in different settings like the classroom and the workplace.
Do Foreign Accents Influence the Perceived Difficulty of a Sentence?
Do Foreign Accents Influence the Perceived Difficulty of a Sentence?
Hannah Daugherty & Sara Incera
Multilingual Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Eastern Kentucky University
Everyone has an accent. Accents that are perceived as foreign can influence listeners’ ease of understanding and empathy. We examined whether a speaker's accent influenced the perceived difficulty of a sentence. In particular, whether sentences spoken by foreign-accented speakers were perceived as more difficult to understand. Our results indicated that, when listeners rate the difficulty of the sentence, they are influenced by the speaker’s accent. Listeners consistently rated sentences spoken by a foreign speaker as more difficult than sentences spoken by a native speaker, despite asking them to focus on the difficulty of the sentence itself. These results point to the conclusion that listeners are unable to disentangle between difficulties they are experiencing due to the speaker and difficulties they are experiencing due to the sentence. Implications of these findings can inform how diverse speakers are perceived in different settings like the classroom and the workplace.