Listeners use social information (even if you tell them not to)

In this replication and extension of the Strand Effect (Strand &ampl Johnson, 1996), Kyler Laycock and Kevin McGowan explore the extent to which listeners have to believe a Matched Guise manipulation for purported social information to influence low level speech perception.

Removing the disguise: The Matched Guise Technique, Incongruity, & Listener Awareness

Lab alumnus, Kyler Laycock and Kevin McGowan recently published a paper in the Journal of Sociolinguistics investigating the intersection of listener awareness and instructions provided in the Matched Guise Technique.

It turns out that, at least in this replication of the Strand Effect (Strand & Johnson, 1996), listeners incorporate social information into their perceptions of speech even if they have no reason to believe that social information is accurate. This article, entitled Removing the disguise: The Matched Guise Technique, Incongruity, & Listener Awareness is part of the 2025 theme series on awareness in sociolinguistics.

References

Laycock, K., & McGowan, K. B. (2025). Removing the disguise: The matched guise technique, incongruity, and listener awareness. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 29(3), 194–209. https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12700

Strand, E. A., & Johnson, K. (1996). 2. Gradient and Visual Speaker Normalization in the Perception of Fricatives. In D. Gibbon (Ed.), Natural Language Processing and Speech Technology: Results of the 3rd KONVENS Conference, Bielefeld, October (pp. 14–26). De Gruyter Mouton. https://doi.org/doi:10.1515/9783110821895-003