The language-familiarity effect in talker identification by highly proficient bilinguals depends on second-language immersion

Abstract

Listeners identify voices more accurately in their native language than an unfamiliar, foreign language in a phenomenon called the language-familiarity effect (LFE). Talker identification studies consistently find that even highly proficient speakers of a foreign language persist in identifying voices more accurately in their native language than their second language. It remains unclear why some bilinguals continue to exhibit the LFE despite fluent receptive and expressive second-language skills. In the present study, native Mandarin speakers who were fluent in English and living in the United States learned to identify Mandarin- and English-speaking talkers by the sound of their voice. We assessed hypotheses proposing that either depth of second-language immersion or age of second-language acquisition account for the magnitude of the LFE among highly proficient second-language speakers. Only the extent to which bilinguals were currently immersed in second-language use affected the magnitude of the LFE; ...