The effect of speaker-specific auditory images on reading in Japanese
- PDF / 516,799 Bytes
- 8 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 31 Downloads / 141 Views
The effect of speaker-specific auditory images on reading in Japanese Yuichi Mori 1 & Keiko Ishii 2
# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2018
Abstract Auditory images for speech are preserved and can be accessed during reading. This research, conducted in Japan, examined whether and to what extent previous findings on the influence of speaker-specific auditory images in reading can be generalized to non-English speakers in a different cultural context. In two studies, Japanese participants were asked to read a text aloud after being informed that the text had been written by either a fast speaker or a slow speaker whose speech they were to listen to. The participants read the episode more slowly when it was attributed to a slow speaker than when it was attributed to a fast speaker. Individual differences in one’s mimicry of the speaker moderated the influence of speaker-specific auditory images in reading. The influence was confirmed only for those who consciously mimicked the speaker. In contrast, situational cues manipulated to generate affiliation with and closeness to the speakers did not influence the participants’ reading times. Keywords Auditory imagery . Voice . Reading . Mimicry . Culture
In daily communications, listeners usually pay attention to not only the verbal meaning of a spoken message but also the nonlinguistic features of a speaker’s voice, such as pitch and loudness. Listeners likely preserve nonlinguistic features in memory because in many cases, the features are useful for detecting speakers’ identity, social status, and emotional states (e.g., Nygaard et al. 2000; Palmeri et al. 1993). The nonlinguistic features of a speaker’s voice also influence a variety of linguistic tasks (for a review, see Hubbard 2010). For instance, when participants are asked to listen to messages spoken by a speaker and then read a text written by the speaker, the speaker’s speaking rate influences their reading times (Alexander and Nygaard 2008; Kosslyn and Matt 1977). In the present research, testing non-English speakers, we examine whether the nonlinguistic features of a speaker’s voice influence reading times and whether influence by Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-018-9946-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Keiko Ishii [email protected] 1
Department of Psychology, Graduate School of Humanities, Kobe University, 1-1 Rokkodai-cho, Nada-ku, Kobe 657-8501, Japan
2
Department of Cognitive and Psychological Sciences, Graduate School of Informatics, Nagoya University, Furo-cho, Chikusa-ku, Nagoya 464-8601, Japan
nonlinguistic features is moderated by individual differences in mimicry of the features. Researchers have mainly focused on auditory images of basic vocal features and investigated whether and to what extent auditory images are perceptually evoked and accordingly influence one’s perceptual experience (e.g., Intons-Peterson 1980; Intons-Peterson et al. 1992).
Data Loading...
