A language-familiarity effect for speaker discrimination without comprehension

David Fleming · Bruno Lucio Giordano · Roberto Caldara · Pascal Belin

89 citations0/0 files storedProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

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Phonetics and Phonology Research Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism Neuroscience and Music Perception

Abstract

The influence of language familiarity upon speaker identification is well established, to such an extent that it has been argued that "Human voice recognition depends on language ability" [Perrachione TK, Del Tufo SN, Gabrieli JDE (2011) Science 333(6042):595]. However, 7-mo-old infants discriminate speakers of their mother tongue better than they do foreign speakers [Johnson EK, Westrek E, Nazzi T, Cutler A (2011) Dev Sci 14(5):1002-1011] despite their limited speech comprehension abilities, suggesting that speaker discrimination may rely on familiarity with the sound structure of one's native language rather than the ability to comprehend speech. To test this hypothesis, we asked Chinese and English adult participants to rate speaker dissimilarity in pairs of sentences in English or Mandarin that were first time-reversed to render them unintelligible. Even in these conditions a language-familiarity effect was observed: Both Chinese and English listeners rated pairs of native-language speakers as more dissimilar than foreign-language speakers, despite their inability to understand the material. Our data indicate that the language familiarity effect is not based on comprehension but rather on familiarity with the phonology of one's native language. This effect may stem from a mechanism analogous to the "other-race" effect in face recognition.

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References

2007The Phonology of Standard Chinese 1998Talker-specific learning in speech perception 1989Some effects of talker variability on spoken word recognition 2009Dyslexia: A New Synergy Between Education and Cognitive Neuroscience 2007Speech perception at the interface of neurobiology and linguistics 2011Human Voice Recognition Depends on Language Ability 1966Effects of Stimulus Content and Duration on Talker Identification 1991The role of language familiarity in voice identification

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2019Forming social impressions from voices in native and foreign languages 2016Low Vocal Pitch Preference Drives First Impressions Irrespective of Context in Male Voices but Not in Female Voices 2017Another bilingual advantage? Perception of talker-voice information 2020Development of voice perception is dissociated across gender cues in school-age children 2019Acoustic and linguistic factors affecting perceptual dissimilarity judgments of voices

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