What is it about?
Spoken language is variable. Each of us speaks differently. And, the way we talk tells people something about us. For example, we might make guesses about the age, gender, or race of an individual based on how they sound. We investigate whether these voice differences lead to differences in how we remember spoken language.
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Why is it important?
When we understand spoken language, we often focus on the general meaning that was intended. Other times, it is important to remember exactly what was said. Our findings show that this is a talker-specific process. For some talkers, we are much more likely to remember exactly what was said, and for others, only generally what was said. This is likely due to social perceptions of individuals and/or groups, and can impact every day experiences by reinforcing to pre-existing gaps in social structure.
Perspectives
I think in a post-Covid society, new ways of interacting with one another permeate our culture. While the switch to online contexts is relatively new, one thing is strikingly clear: These contexts amplify an individual’s voice, or way of talking, which cues information about their language background, socio-economic status, gender, etc. The finding that we remember, and likely attend to, the speech of some talkers more than others is likely to reinforce biases and compound gaps that already exist.
Meghan Sumner
Stanford University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Effects of phonetically-cued talker variation on semantic encoding, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, November 2013, Acoustical Society of America (ASA),
DOI: 10.1121/1.4826151.
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