Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Adults are more accurate at identifying own- than other-accented talkers (e.g., Stevenage, 2012). However, no study to date has examined when the Other Accent Effect (OAE) first emerges. Here, we use a voice line-up task to test 6- to 12-year-olds (N=59) on their ability to recognize own- (Canadian English) and other-accented (Japanese- or Mandarin-accented English) talkers. Own-accented talkers (M=0.77) were recognized better than other-accented talkers (M=0.61), p<.005. No effect of age was observed. This indicates the OAE is well-entrenched by 6 years of age. Interestingly, all children tended to evaluate other-accented talkers negatively, but these biases did not predict the strength of the OAE, suggesting that a factor other than social biases drives the effect (Yu et al., 2021). To further understand the underlying mechanisms of the OAE, we are currently testing children in the same line-up task on their ability to recognize Southern American and Australian English talkers.