And then I saw her race: Race-based expectations affect infants' word processing

Area of Science:

• Developmental Psychology
• Speech Perception
• Social Cognition

Background:

• Adult speech perception is influenced by speaker social properties, such as race.
• The developmental origins of these influences on speech processing are not well understood.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether 16-month-old infants' speech perception is modulated by the race of the speaker.
• To determine if infants' expectations about speakers, based on race, affect their processing of familiar and unfamiliar speech patterns.

Main Methods:

• Infants were presented with familiar words in native and unfamiliar accents, paired with images of same-race or other-race speakers.
• Word recognition was assessed based on infant responses to auditory stimuli in different speaker-race conditions.
• Two additional experiments examined infants' tolerance for atypical pronunciations from other-race speakers.

Main Results:

• Infants recognized words in a familiar accent from a same-race speaker but not from an other-race speaker.
• Infants recognized both familiar and unfamiliar accent versions of words when presented by an other-race speaker.
• Tolerance for other-race speaker's atypical pronunciations was observed only when deviations were systematic.

Conclusions:

• Speaker race influences infant speech perception, demonstrating early-emerging biases.
• Infants form expectations about speakers based on race, which impacts their interpretation of speech.
• These findings provide the first evidence for race-based expectations influencing auditory processing in infancy.