Social priming of speech perception in Japanese: A preliminary study

Previous studies that examined the effect of a speaker's perceived race on speech perception in English have found mixed results (Babel and Russell 2015; McGowan 2015; Kutlu et al. 2022; McLaughlin and Van Engen 2024). To pave the way for a fuller account of this phenomenon, it is necessary to conduct experiments in languages other than English and regions other than Western countries. To fill in this gap, this study extends the method of McLaughlin and Van Engen (2024) to Japanese. We recruited undergraduate students who were born, raised, and are living in Japan (N = 40) and measured transcription accuracy of L1-Japanese speech in noise while subjects were presented with either an East Asian female’s face or a Black female’s face (between-subject design). Subjects also completed Affect and Attitude Questionnaires and Language Background Questionnaires after the transcription task. We found no priming effects when comparing the two pictures. Although the interaction between priming and questionnaire scores was non-significant, individual differences in attitudes toward the speaker, Status and Solidarity (approximately competence and warmth), significantly predicted overall performance, suggesting that listeners who rated the speaker's Status lower and Solidarity higher demonstrated better transcription accuracy.