Sub-regional ‘other-accent’ effects on lay listeners’ speaker identification abilities: a voice line-up study with speakers and listeners from the North East of England

TY - JOUR

T1 - Sub-regional ‘other-accent’ effects on lay listeners’ speaker identification abilities: a voice line-up study with speakers and listeners from the North East of England

AU - Braun, Almut

AU - Llamas, Carmen

AU - Watt, Dominic

AU - French, John Peter

AU - Robertson, Duncan

N1 - ©2018, equinox publishing. This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self-archiving policy. Further copying may not be permitted; contact the publisher for details.

PY - 2018/12/7

Y1 - 2018/12/7

N2 - Previous studies have shown that listeners perform worse in speaker identification experiments when they are unfamiliar with the accents of the speakers. Such effects have been documented for listeners hearing unfamiliar foreign languages (language familiarity effect) and unfamiliar regional accents ('other-accent' effect). The present study investigates the 'other-accent' effect at a sub-regional level. Listeners from three different localities (Newcastle, Sunderland and Middlesbrough) within the same greater dialectal region (the North East of England) participated in one of three target-present voice line-ups using samples spoken by speakers from one of the three localities. Listeners who heard a voice line-up in their own local accent (ingroup listeners) missed the target speaker's voice significantly less often than listeners who heard a voice line-up comprised of speakers of one of the other two local accents (out-group listeners). The proportions of correct hits and false alarms were approximately similar across in-group and out-group listeners.

AB - Previous studies have shown that listeners perform worse in speaker identification experiments when they are unfamiliar with the accents of the speakers. Such effects have been documented for listeners hearing unfamiliar foreign languages (language familiarity effect) and unfamiliar regional accents ('other-accent' effect). The present study investigates the 'other-accent' effect at a sub-regional level. Listeners from three different localities (Newcastle, Sunderland and Middlesbrough) within the same greater dialectal region (the North East of England) participated in one of three target-present voice line-ups using samples spoken by speakers from one of the three localities. Listeners who heard a voice line-up in their own local accent (ingroup listeners) missed the target speaker's voice significantly less often than listeners who heard a voice line-up comprised of speakers of one of the other two local accents (out-group listeners). The proportions of correct hits and false alarms were approximately similar across in-group and out-group listeners.

UR - https://journals.equinoxpub.com/index.php/IJSLL/article/view/37340

U2 - 10.1558/ijsll.37340

DO - 10.1558/ijsll.37340

M3 - Article

VL - 25

SP - 231

EP - 255

JO - International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law

JF - International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law

SN - 1748-8885

IS - 2

ER -