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Abstract:
Speech perception is known to be influenced by listeners’ expectations of the speaker. This paper
tests whether the demographic makeup of individuals’ communities can influence their perception
of foreign sounds by influencing their expectations of the language. Using online experiments with
participants from all across the U.S. and matched census data on the proportion of Spanish and
other foreign language speakers in participants’ communities, this paper shows that the demo-
graphic makeup of individuals’ communities influences their expectations of foreign languages to
have an alveolar trill versus a tap (Experiment 1), as well as their consequent perception of these
sounds (Experiment 2). Thus, the paper shows that while individuals’ expectations of foreign lan-
guage to have a trill occasionally lead them to misperceive a tap in a foreign language as a trill, a
higher proportion of
non-trill
language speakers in one’s community decreases this likelihood.
These results show that individuals’ environment can influence their perception by shaping their
linguistic expectations
