"Socioindexical Expectations and Speech Perception in Noise"
Kevin McGowan, Rice University
Listeners extract cues to speaker identity from the speech stream. Recent evidence suggests that
listeners will also perceive these socioindexical cues, even if absent, when primed to expect
them. Most researchers interpret these findings as evidence for exemplar models of speech
perception (Niedzielski, 1999; Hay et al., 2006b; Staum Casasanto, 2009a). At least one early line
of research, however, attributes the influence of socioindexical knowledge on speech perception to
listeners’ negative bias (Rubin, 1992, Lippi-Green 1997). A pair of experiments with experienced
and inexperienced listeners investigates the use of socioindexical expectation during speech
perception. The first experiment, a yes/no accent identification task, reveals that listeners,
whether experienced or inexperienced with Chinese-accented English, are capable of judging the
authenticity of a non-native accent; though experienced listeners are significantly more accurate.
Inexperienced listeners are significantly more likely to rate an imitated accent as authentic -suggesting they depend more heavily on stereotypical features. Experiment 2 addresses the extent
to which listeners can use socioindexical expectations to enhance speech perception. Both
experienced and inexperienced listeners were significantly better at transcribing Chinese-accented
sentences in noise when presented with an Asian face than when presented either with a silhouette
or a Caucasian face. This result suggests that the negative bias hypothesis cannot be correct;
listeners can use socioindexical cues to enhance speech perception. These results point to the
need for more natural -- more linguistic -- tasks in the investigation of socioindexical speech
perception and highlight the need to look closely at time course to better understand the role of
socioindexical expectation in speech perception.