CORDIS

‘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.

We conducted three experiments, which gathered (electro-)physiological and behavioural measures. The overall objective and results of each experiment are reported below.

Experiment 1.
Foucart, A., Santamaria-Garcia, H., Hartsuiker, R.. Short exposure to a foreign accent impacts subsequent cognitive processes. (in press). Neuropsychologia.

Although speaking a foreign language is undoubtedly an asset, foreign-accented speakers are usually perceived negatively. It is unknown, however, to what extent this bias impacts cognitive processes. We used ERPs and pupillometry to investigate whether the negative bias generated by a short exposure to a foreign accent influences the overall perception of a speaker, even when the person is not speaking. We compared responses to written sentence comprehension, memory and visual perception, associated with native speakers (high and low social status) and a foreign-accented speaker (high social status). The foreign-accented speaker consistently fell in-between the high-status native speaker and the low-status native speaker. This study was the first physiological demonstration that short exposure to a foreign accent impacts subsequent cognitive processes, and that foreign-accented speakers seem to be considered less reliable than native speakers, even with equally high social status. Awareness of this bias is essential to avoid discriminations in our multilingual society.

Experiment 2
Foucart, A., Costa, A., Hartsuiker, R. (in prep.). Foreign-accented speakers are not that ‘incredible’.

Previous results suggest that foreign-accented speakers are less credible than native speakers. This negative bias has been attributed to reduced processing fluency; the more difficult one is to understand, the less credible. We collected behavioural responses to replicate results and to evaluate the impact of accent on decisional processes. We used ERPs as a more fine-grained measure to examine the impact of accent on online (automatic) processes during sentence comprehension. We presented Dutch native speakers with audio sentences containing true (and known) information, unknown (but true) information or information violating world knowledge, spoken either in a native or a foreign accent. The sentences of particular interest were those containing unknown information because participants had to rely on the speaker’s knowledge to evaluate the veracity of the sentence. Behavioural measures did not show differences in the judgement of sentences spoken by the native and foreign speakers. As expected from the language literature, a larger N400 component was found for sentences containing unknown information and world knowledge violations than for true sentences, but it was not modulated by accent. Interestingly, accent impacted the perception of speaker’s status and the affect towards that speaker. The findings suggest that processing fluency may not have a determining role in the negative bias usually observed against foreign-accented speaker that is probably more strongly driven by social categorisation.

Experiment 3.
Foucart, A., Costa, A., Morís Fernández, L., Hartsuiker, R.. Foreignness or processing fluency? On understanding the negative bias towards foreign-accented speakers. (Registered Report, In-Principle-Acceptance). Language Learning.

There is a negative bias towards foreign-accented speakers. For example, trivia statements spoken in a foreign accent are usually assessed as less true than when spoken in a native accent. However, it is not clear to what extent this bias originates from social categorisation (in/out-group categorisation) and from processing fluency (ease with which information is processed). It has been argued that accent first induces a social identity effect and that processing fluency later modifies the impact of this effect during communication. Using ERPs, the study tested this hypothesis by looking at the effect of social categorisation and processing fluency on sente

Beyond the state of the art, the fellowship has been a crucial contribution to the development of my career and the improvement of my curriculum, and resulted in my obtaining a permanent position as principal investigator.

Moreover, the importance of the topic for our multilingual society and Europe was also revealed by an article about the project published in the Horizon magazine.
https://horizon-magazine.eu/article/why-do-people-discriminate-against-speakers-foreign-accents.html