Title
Abstraction and the (Misnamed) Language Familiarity Effect.
Abstract
Talkers are recognized more accurately if they are speaking the listeners' native language rather than an unfamiliar language. This language familiarity effect has been shown not to depend upon comprehension and must instead involve language sound patterns. We further examine the level of sound-pattern processing involved, by comparing talker recognition in foreign languages versus two varieties of English, by (a) English speakers of one variety, (b) English speakers of the other variety, and (c) non-native listeners (more familiar with one of the varieties). All listener groups performed better with native than foreign speech, but no effect of language variety appeared: Native listeners discriminated talkers equally well in each, with the native variety never outdoing the other variety, and non-native listeners discriminated talkers equally poorly in each, irrespective of the variety's familiarity. The results suggest that this talker recognition effect rests not on simple familiarity, but on an abstract level of phonological processing.
Year
DOI
Venue
2018
10.1111/cogs.12520
COGNITIVE SCIENCE
Keywords
Field
DocType
Talker recognition,Language familiarity effect,Native language,Dialect,Abstraction
Abstraction,Cognitive psychology,Psychology,Varieties of English,Linguistics,First language,Comprehension,Foreign language
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
42
2.0
0364-0213
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
0
0.34
3
Authors
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Elizabeth K. Johnson111.72
Laurence Bruggeman200.34
Anne Cutler33911.92