Mood Influences Listeners\u27 Ratings of Foreign Accents

The context in which you process words influences how you perceive foreign accents. In this pilot investigation 24 participants were randomly assigned to watch a happy or a sad video, and then asked to rate the accent of different words. Half the words were spoken by native- and the other half by foreign-accented speakers. Overall, participants took longer to rate the foreign-accented speakers, which supports the idea that additional effort is necessary to rate the accent of foreign speakers. Interestingly, participants exposed to the sad video rated the level of accentedness of the foreign speakers as more neutral than participants exposed to the happy video. In line with the cognitive load theory, participants in the sad condition had less cognitive resources available to rate the stimuli. Listener’s mood affected their ratings of foreign accents.https://encompass.eku.edu/swps_graduategallery/1093/thumbnail.jp