Social Priming of Speech Perception: The Role of Individual Differences in Implicit Racial and Ethnic Associations

Prior research has shown that visual information, such as a speaker’s perceived race or ethnicity, prompts listeners to expect a specific sociophonetic pattern (“social priming”). Indeed, a picture of an East Asian face may facilitate perception of second language (L2) Mandarin Chinese-accented English but interfere with perception of first language- (L1-) accented English. The present study builds on this line of inquiry, addressing the relationship between social priming effects and implicit racial/ethnic associations for L1- and L2-accented speech. For L1-accented speech, we found no priming effects when comparing White versus East Asian or Latina primes. For L2- (Mandarin Chinese-) accented speech, however, transcription accuracy was slightly better following an East Asian prime than a White prime. Across all experiments, a relationship between performance and individual differences in implicit associations emerged, but in no cases did this relationship interact with the priming manipulation. Ultimately, exploring social priming effects with additional methodological approaches, and in different populations of listeners, will help to determine whether these effects operate differently in the context of L1- and L2-accented speech.