The effects of listener biases on speech intelligibility

Abstract

Race, gender, and age have traditionally been considered the three big social categories perceivers attend to. Recent research has highlighted how perceivers, listeners in this case, use the acoustic-phonetic information from spoken language to evaluate and categorize individuals. For example, studies have shown that different dialects elicit varying judgments of intelligence, friendliness and attractiveness. Such biases have implications regarding our assessment of individuals, be it in the clinic or the courtroom. While we know that our perception of speech can trigger biases, it is important to explore the opposite—whether our biases affect our perception of speech. This study aims to contribute to the knowledge base of the latter by examining the effects of listener biases on speech intelligibility. Listeners will be presented with sentences, independently controlled for clarity, produced by model talkers of different dialects and backgrounds. This auditory stimuli will be accompanied by an image or description of the talker as a method of eliciting or constructing a preconceived linguistic bias. After each sentence, participants will be asked to type out what they heard. Analyses will examine the proportion of correct words, confidence ratings, response time, and other measures exploring participants’ ratings of vocal qualities.