Five-year-olds’ Social Preferences and Cultural Inferences About Foreign-Accented Speakers
Date
2022-09
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Abstract
Two experiments investigated whether five-year-olds’ accent-based cultural inferences and social preferences varied depending on the information provided about the speakers, and whether they were associated with children’s linguistic experiences. In each experiment, 96 five-year-olds were randomly assigned to one of three between-subjects conditions. First, children were introduced to a native-accented speaker and a foreign-accented speaker and were taught limited information about both (i.e., the colours of their notebooks). Next, children in the baseline conditions proceeded to the test trials. In the differences minimized and differences maximized conditions, children were first taught cultural information about the speakers. In the differences minimized conditions, both speakers were associated with cultural items (i.e., food and clothing) that were familiar. In the differences maximized condition, the two speakers were associated with different cultural items (i.e., the native-accented speaker with the familiar object, foreign-accented with the less familiar object). In the cultural inference trials, children were asked which item matched the speaker’s voice (i.e., the voice of the native or foreign-accented speaker). In the social preference trials, children were asked to indicate which of the two speakers they wanted as a friend. Finally, parents completed a language and accent questionnaire. Methodological considerations were identified in Experiment 1 and changes to the design of the study were implemented in Experiment 2. In Experiment 1, children’s selections did not differ as a function of the information provided to them on either the cultural inference or social preference tasks. In Experiment 2, children’s cultural inferences about foreign-accented speakers varied across the differences minimized and maximized conditions (i.e., children in the differences minimized condition selected significantly more familiar cultural items). Moreover, across all conditions, children associated familiar objects more with the native-accented speaker and unfamiliar objects with the foreign-accented speaker. In the social preference task, children in the differences maximized condition preferentially selected the native-accented speaker on an initial trial. Finally, no association emerged between children’s linguistic experiences and their accent-based cultural inferences and social preferences. Together, the results of these experiments offer insight into the conditions under which children’s accent-based inferences and social preferences are modulated.
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Keywords
accent, social categories
Citation
Zepeda, M. (2022). Five-year-olds’ social preferences and cultural inferences about foreign-accented speakers (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.