title: A language-familiarity effect for speaker discrimination without comprehension.
abstract: The influence of language familiarity upon speaker identification is well established, to such an extent that it has been argued that "Human voice recognition depends on language ability" [Perrachione TK, Del Tufo SN, Gabrieli JDE (2011) Science 333(6042):595]. However, 7-mo-old infants discriminate speakers of their mother tongue better than they do foreign speakers [Johnson EK, Westrek E, Nazzi T, Cutler A (2011) Dev Sci 14(5):1002-1011] despite their limited speech comprehension abilities, suggesting that speaker discrimination may rely on familiarity with the sound structure of one's native language rather than the ability to comprehend speech. To test this hypothesis, we asked Chinese and English adult participants to rate speaker dissimilarity in pairs of sentences in English or Mandarin that were first time-reversed to render them unintelligible. Even in these conditions a language-familiarity effect was observed: Both Chinese and English listeners rated pairs of native-language speakers as more dissimilar than foreign-language speakers, despite their inability to understand the material. Our data indicate that the language familiarity effect is not based on comprehension but rather on familiarity with the phonology of one's native language. This effect may stem from a mechanism analogous to the "other-race" effect in face recognition.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QB, United Kingdom; d.fleming.1@research.gla.ac.uk.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Fleming
authors.affiliation: Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QB, United Kingdom;
authors.forename: Bruno L
authors.initials: BL
authors.lastname: Giordano
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Fribourg, 1700 Fribourg, Switzerland;
authors.forename: Roberto
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Caldara
authors.affiliation: Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QB, United Kingdom; Département de Psychologie, Université de Montréal, Montréal, QC, Canada H2V 2S9; and Institut des Neurosciences de La Timone, Unite Mixte de Recherche 7289, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Université Aix-Marseille, 13005 Marseille, France.
authors.forename: Pascal
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Belin
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D032882:Comprehension / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D013065:Speech Intelligibility / Q000502:physiology*; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: dissimilarity ratings; unintelligible speech; voice perception