Do low intelligibility voices induce false memories?

Abstract

Spoken language is highly variable with phonetic variation that is attributable to multiple dimensions, including, but not limited to, differences in dialect, mood, native language, sociolinguistic dimensions, and talker-specific idiosyncrasies. Phonetic variation has documented effects on other aspects of linguistic processing. For example, Sumner and Kataoka found that phonetic variation affected semantic processing in semantic priming and false memory tasks, to which they concluding that socially dispreferred (i.e., voices or accents that are socially stigmatized or less desirable) phonetic variation received less attention in encoding, leading to a lack of priming and higher false memory rates [Sumner & Kataoka, 2013, JASA-EL, 134(6)]. In this study we compare the intelligibility and propensity to induce false memories in a between-subjects design. Intelligibility is assessed as response latency in a speeded shadowing task, and false memories are measured using standardized false memory lists where reporting of critical lure items not in the auditorily presented list are counted as false memories. The speaker set consists of five speakers of English, representing two local accents, two nonnative accents, and one native nonlocal accent. The results of this study contribute to our understanding of how phonetic variation affects word recognition and semantic processing.