SocialAccent · The impact of foreign accent on social interaction and cognitive processes.
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2017-01-01 → 2018-12-31
- EU contribution
- €160,800
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF-EF-ST
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Results in brief
The impact of foreign accent on social interaction and cognitive processes.
‘Ants don’t sleep’. One would think that this sentence should be assessed as equally true (or false) independently of the speaker’s accent. Then again, it seems that it is not the case; although speakers with a foreign accent can sometime be perceived positively, they are usually judged as less trustworthy, less educated, less intelligent and less competent than native speakers. This negative bias towards Foreign-accented speakers (thereafter, foreign accent bias) has critical consequences on many aspects of everyday life, like discrimination in job interviews or in courtroom. Given the migration flow in Europe, it is crucial for our multilingual society to understand the impact foreign accent bias has on social interaction and cognitive processes. The project addressed two main questions, each corresponding to a work package (WP). WP1: How does the foreign accent bias affect cognitive processes? This WP evaluated how a foreign-accented speaker’s negative status affects linguistic and sensory-perceptual processing. WP2: Foreign accent bias: reduced ‘processing fluency’ or prejudice? This WP examined how foreign accent bias is modulated by social stereotypes, and the consequences of this modulation in the brain. The results suggest that an accent triggers an immediate categorization of the speaker as an out-group member, which negatively affects the perception of the speaker. This negative perception is reinforced by the difficulty to process foreign-accented speech. The findings also reveal that a short exposure to an accent (about 2 minutes) is enough to impact subsequent processes even if they do not involve spoken language (e.g., sentence reading, memory, speaker’s visual perception). Awareness of this bias is essential to avoid discriminations in our multilingual society.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
‘Ants don’t sleep’. One would think that this sentence should be assessed as equally true (or false) independently of the speaker’s accent. It is not the case. Overall, speakers with a foreign accent (FA) are judged as less trustworthy, less educated, less intelligent and less competent than native speakers. This negative bias towards foreign-accented speakers (thereafter, FA bias) has critical consequences on many aspects of everyday life (e.g., job discrimination). Given the migration flow in Europe, it is crucial to understand the impact FA bias has on social interaction. This negative bias seems to have different origins: linguistic (FA is more difficult to understand than native accent, thus, it reduces ‘processing fluency’), and social (FA triggers a rapid categorisation of the speaker as out-group). The project will investigate 1) how FA bias affects cognitive processes, and 2) the modulation of the FA bias by social stereotypes and its consequences in the brain. The project is innovative as it examines the real-time impact of FA on cognitive processes using event-related potentials, a technique that allows recording online brain activity. The proposed experiments involve native listeners and non-native speakers with a medium FA. The findings will be of interest for many fields like linguistics, social psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and to some extent for other social disciplines (law, education, health). They will also be relevant for social institutions (Council of Europe) and services for immigrants (Linguistic Integration of Adult Migrants). The outcome of the project will be useful to generate solutions to reduce this social bias. Moreover, the project fits well with the current interest of the ERA, being in line with FP7 funded projects like ‘European Multilingual Experience’. Finally, Prof. Hartsuiker’s laboratory (Ghent University, Belgium) in which speech processing and bilingualism are investigated provides a perfect scientific environment.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- UNIVERSITEIT GENT · GentCoordinatorBelgium
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union