LINGUIST List 18.1370
Mon May 07 2007
Diss: Phonetics/Socioling: Nagao: 'Cross-language Study of Age Perc...'
Editor for this issue: Hunter Lockwood
<hunterlinguistlist.org>
Directory
1. Kyoko
Nagao,
Cross-language Study of Age Perception
Message 1: Cross-language Study of Age Perception
Date: 04-May-2007
From: Kyoko Nagao <knagaoindiana.edu>
Subject: Cross-language Study of Age Perception
Institution: Indiana University
Program: Department of Spanish
Dissertation Status: Completed
Degree Date: 2006
Author: Kyoko Nagao
Dissertation Title: Cross-language Study of Age Perception
Dissertation URL: http://mypage.iu.edu/~knagao/papers/Nagao_2006_thesis.pdf
Linguistic Field(s):
Phonetics
Sociolinguistics
Dissertation Director:
Karen Forrest
Diane Kewley-Port
Robert F. Port
Kenneth de Jong
Dissertation Abstract:
A number of studies have shown that listeners can estimate the age oftalkers quite accurately by listening to speech alone. However, the effectsof native language on age perception have not yet been explored. Thecurrent study examined the effects of listener's language familiarity onthe perception of a talker's age in the three linguistic contexts varyingthe amount of information, i.e., vowel, phrase, and sentence. Two groups oflisteners (English and Japanese) estimated the age of talkers whose nativelanguage were matched or mismatched with the listener's. Furthermore, inorder to investigate the effect of age stereotypes in each language, thesame listeners estimated the age of talkers who disguised themselves as 20year older or younger than their age.
Results indicated that listener's estimation of talker's age improved whenmore information was available. The listeners estimated the age of talkersmore accurately in the familiar language than the foreign language. Betterage estimation was found for female talkers than male talkers, but theeffect of talker's sex only appeared in the age estimation in the familiarlanguage. Results of age estimation for age-disguised speech revealed thatboth language groups in this investigation have similar age stereotypes.These results suggested that the age-related speech characteristics arebased on both on physiological factors and linguistic variation, variationthat a non-native listener does not have access to. Results also suggestthat there exists an underlying perceptual mechanism for identifying theage that is common across languages.
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