Identifying A Voice May Prove Difficult When Accent Is Different To Your Own

Main Category: Psychology / Psychiatry
Article Date: 02 Sep 2009 - 12:00 PDT

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Psychologists will present evidence that an 'other-accent effect' exists when people try to identify voices, today, 2nd September 2009, at the British Psychological Society's Cognitive Psychology section annual conference.

Dr Sarah Stevenage from the University of Southampton investigated whether people find it more difficult to differentiate between people with a different regional accent to their own, than between people with the same regional accent as their own.

49 people with southern accents (from Southampton) and 85 people with northern accents (Manchester) took part in the study, in which they had to listen to a voice, then pick this target voice out of an 'auditory line up' of six voices with the same accent. Every participant did this for both northern and southern accents.

Preliminary results of this study are being presented today, 2nd September 2009. Dr Stevenage said: "We found that people were affected by accent in this task. Participants in our study found it more difficult to discriminate between speakers with a different accent to their own. Northern participants were much more successful at picking out the northern target voice than southern participants were. Additionally, and more worryingly, the false alarm rate - picking the wrong voice out of the line up - was significantly higher when people were judging those voices with accents different to their own.

"Our results provide evidence for an 'other accent affect', that people find it harder to discriminate between voices of a different accent to their own. This could have important implications when a criminal's voice is part of an eye witness' evidence, or a suspect's identification."

The research was carried out as part of an undergraduate research project, and won a prize for innovation within the University of Southampton's School of Psychology.

The British Psychological Society Cognitive Section annual conference is taking place at the University of Hertfordshire from 1 - 3 September 2009.

Source
British Psychological Society

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