Assessing the Specificity and Accuracy of Accent Judgments by Lay Listeners.
Natalie Braber, Harriet Smith, David Wright and 2 others
PMID 35723130WHAT IT FOUND
Listeners are more accurate when they give vague answers.
Specific city-level guesses were often wrong, while country-level labels were more likely to be correct. Confidence did track with accuracy, so a hesitant listener is probably mistaken.
Key findings
01In Experiment 1, overall accuracy was low but varied by accent, with Irish and Scottish voices identified correctly more often than English ones.
02Less specific responses were significantly more likely to be accurate than highly specific city-level guesses.
03Confidence in the listener's judgment was a predictor of accuracy, with higher confidence correlating with correct identification.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study used read speech (Rainbow Passage) rather than spontaneous speech, which may not reflect real-world listening conditions where content and accent interact. Sample sizes were relatively small (41 and 57 participants). The study focused only on regional accents within the UK, so findings may not generalize to other languages or non-native accents. Experiment 1 used a single speaker per accent, which may not represent the full variability of that accent.
Declared interests
The authors declared no financial support for the research, authorship, or publication of this article.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that a witness who confidently names a specific city is more reliable than one who vaguely names a country. The data shows that specific city-level guesses were far more likely to be wrong than broad country-level labels, even when confidence was high. Specificity often signals error, not precision.