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The role of perceived ethnicity in speech processing: Insights from diverse populations and methods

In this talk, I will discuss behavioral and electrophysiological studies that examine the extent to which perceived talker identity influences speech comprehension and evaluation. Two frequently discussed theoretical accounts lead to different predictions. Bias-based accounts assume conscious misunderstanding of a standard variety in the case of a speaker classification as nonnative, resulting in negative ratings and poorer comprehension. Exemplar-based models suggest that such effects arise only when a contextual cue to the social identity is misleading, i.e., when ethnicity and speech clash with listeners’ expectations. To address these accounts, and to assess ethnicity effects across different groups and methods, diverse non-university populations (172 monolinguals, 58 bilinguals, age range 12–92) were primed with photographs of Asian and white European women and asked to repeat and rate utterances spoken in three accents (Korean-accented German, a regional German accent, standard German), all embedded in background noise. In three electrophysiological studies, students (106 monolinguals, age range 18–30) passively listed to utterances in two accents (Turkish-accented and standard Dutch) and were either primed or not with photographs of a Turkic or a Dutch woman. The findings suggest that theoretical contradictions are a consequence of methodological choices, which reflect distinct aspects of social information processing.