Similarity is More Important then Expertise: Accent Effects in Speech Interfaces

TitleSimilarity is More Important then Expertise: Accent Effects in Speech Interfaces
Publication TypeConference Paper
Year of Publication2007
AuthorsDahlback N, Wang QY, Nass C, Alwin J
Conference NameProceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 07)
AbstractIn a balanced between-participants experiment (N = 96) American and Swedish participants listened to tourist information on a website about an American or Swedish city presented in English with either an American or Swedish accent and evaluated the speakers' knowledge of the topic, the voice characteristics, and the information characteristics. Users preferred accents similar to their own. Similarity-attraction effects were so powerful that same-accents speakers were viewed as being more knowledgeable than different-accent speakers even when the information would be much better-known by the opposite-accent speaker. Implications for similarity-attraction overwhelming expertise are discussed.
Posted by mickwalters on Thursday, 19 February, 2009 /

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