Comparing lexical decision reaction times and error rates for Southern and British English

Abstract

The English spoken in the southern states of the US as well as the “received pronunciation” of British English are two varieties that the majority of students at the University of Southern California are relatively unfamiliar with. Some of the popular stereotypes surrounding the two groups of speakers, however, diverge: while it has been shown that certain listeners consistently down-grade Southern speakers on positive attributes like intelligence and competence, no such effect is observed for British speakers. This study aimed to investigate the impact of negative stereotypes on lexical decision reaction times and error rates. A list containing high frequency words, low frequency words and non-words was constructed and a trained voice actor recorded the stimuli in both British and Southern English. Participants heard half of stimuli in each variety. Participants tended to incorrectly reject more real words in Southern English than British. These errors occurred in trials with relatively short reaction times. British English stimuli tended to have slower reaction times. The implications of these findings in light of other experiments comparing lexical decision in these and other varieties of English are discussed.