The Other Accent Effect in Talker Recognition: Now You See It, Now You Don't

Abstract

The existence of the Language Familiarity Effect (LFE), where talkers of a familiar language are easier to identify than talkers of an unfamiliar language, is well‐documented and uncontroversial. However, a closely related phenomenon known as the Other Accent Effect (OAE), where accented talkers are more difficult to recognize, is less well understood. There are several possible explanations for why the OAE exists, but to date, little data exist to adjudicate differences between them. Here, we begin to address this issue by directly comparing listeners’ recognition of talkers who speak in different types of accents, and by examining both the LFE and OAE in the same set of listeners. Specifically, Canadian English listeners were tested on their ability to recognize talkers within four types of voice line‐ups: Canadian English talkers, Australian English talkers, Mandarin‐accented English talkers, and Mandarin talkers. We predicted that the OAE would be present for talkers of Mandarin‐accented English but not for talkers of Australian English—which is precisely what we observed. We also observed a disconnect between listeners’ confidence and performance across different types of accents; that is, listeners performed equally poorly with Mandarin and Mandarin‐accented talkers, but they were more confident with their performance with the latter group of talkers. The present findings set the stage for further investigation into the nature of the OAE by exploring a range of potential explanations for the effect, and introducing important implications for forensic scientists’ evaluation of ear witness testimony.

Talker and accent familiarity yield advantages for voice identity perception: A voice sorting study

“…Specifically, listeners from Northern Ireland, who were highly familiar with the accent and the talkers used in the task, were better able to accurately sort multiple recordings of the same identity into the same cluster ("telling together"), while also making fewer "telling apart" errors (i.e., mixing talkers within clusters). Our findings therefore align with those previously reporting benefits of accent familiarity for voice identity task performance (Braun et al, 2018;Stevenage et al, 2011), as well as those that argue these effects can be small and inconsistent (e.g., Johnson et al, 2018;Yu et al, 2021).…”

“…Some authors have argued that social bias may play a role in several previous reports of accent familiarity effects (e.g., Braun et al, 2018 ; Yu et al, 2021 ). Previous work has reported the effects of such bias when listening to voices: For example, participants rated statements spoken in foreign accents to be less credible, even when asked to ignore the influence of speech intelligibility when making their judgements (Lev-Ari & Keysar, 2010 ).…”

“…Previous work has reported the effects of such bias when listening to voices: For example, participants rated statements spoken in foreign accents to be less credible, even when asked to ignore the influence of speech intelligibility when making their judgements (Lev-Ari & Keysar, 2010). Listeners may therefore perform differently on voice identity tasks when speakers are recognized as belonging to social out-groups (Yu et al, 2021). A mechanism for how bias might impair voice identity processing is not clear, and future work is needed to disentangle the contributions of such higher-order factors from perceptual mechanisms of voice perception (Yu et al, 2021).…”

“…Listeners may therefore perform differently on voice identity tasks when speakers are recognized as belonging to social out-groups (Yu et al, 2021 ). A mechanism for how bias might impair voice identity processing is not clear, and future work is needed to disentangle the contributions of such higher-order factors from perceptual mechanisms of voice perception (Yu et al, 2021 ). It is furthermore unclear if, and to what extent, social bias could have affected performance in the current voice sorting task.…”

The Effects of Language-Related Misunderstanding at Work

“…Similarly, hybrid forms of language (non-native accents, code-switching, jargon) represent novel stimuli for receivers, and can hinder their processing fluency (Dragojevic & Giles, 2016). For instance, a study of Canadian participants revealed that it was more difficult to understand Mandarin-accented English speakers relative to both Canadian-accented and Australian-accented English speakers (Yu, Schertz, & Johnson, 2021). Relatedly, an Event-Related Potential study that measured the cerebral activity of native Spanish speakers who were exposed to native and non-native accented speech revealed that non-native accents interfered with the processing of positive emotion-related words such that participants' reactions to positive words were slower at the electrophysiological level (Hatzidaki, Baus, & Costa, 2015).…”