Investigating the relationship between comprehensibility and social evaluation
The processing fluency hypothesis proposes that listeners’ perceived difficulty processing the speech of L2 speakers
(called comprehensibility/processing fluency) leads them to downgrade those speakers socially. In this
paper, we investigate this relationship, focusing on context-specificity. L1-English listeners provided comprehensibility and social
evaluation ratings of L1-Korean speakers speaking English, while an orthographic depiction of the speech either appeared alongside the audio
or did not, a manipulation aiming to affect comprehensibility. Varying orthography between subjects, Experiment 1 found that orthography
resulted in greater comprehensibility, but not more positive social evaluations. Experiment 2 manipulated orthography within subjects,
varying context: orthography trials were presented first or last. Comprehensibility and social evaluation ratings were related only when
orthography was first, suggesting a conditional, asymmetrical relationship where listeners more readily downgrade than upgrade the same
speaker when orthography changes. Our results highlight the context-dependent nature of these constructs, limiting the generalizability of
the processing fluency hypothesis.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 1.1Social evaluation and comprehensibility/processing fluency
- 1.2The present study
- 2.Experiment 1
- 2.1Materials and methods
- 2.1.1Materials
- 2.1.2Procedure
- 2.1.3Participants
- 2.2Results
- 2.2.1Manipulation check
- 2.2.2Focal analyses
- 2.3Discussion
- 3.Experiment 2
- 3.1Materials and methods
- 3.1.1Materials
- 3.1.2Procedure
- 3.1.3Participants
- 3.2Results
- 3.2.1Manipulation check
- 3.2.2Focal analyses
- 3.3Discussion
- 4.General discussion
- 5.Conclusion
- Notes
-
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