ÌìÑÄÉçÇø

Lindsay Fuchs (Undergraduate Student) received the Undergraduate Research Initiative Award (URI, $7,500) for their project Relevance in accented speech: listener-based factors in understanding situation-bound conversation

Lindsay’s project will study how communication is affected when people speak with a foreign accent, focusing on differences between urban and rural populations. She will examine how pragmatic processing (inferencing beyond what is said) is affected by accents, as well as factors such as experience with accents and political views. Psycholinguistics still uses small parts of the population (educated young adults in cities), which becomes an issue when variables that affect language processing are underrepresented or absent in the studied population and when differences between urban and rural populations exist due to social contexts and attitudes. Lindsay will carry out an online study where participants read scenarios involving native and foreign accented speakers and make yes/no decisions about what the speakers mean based on what they say. Questionnaires tapping into participants’ political views and accent attitudes help assessing whether pragmatic inferencing is dependent on these individual difference factors.

Elizabeth Assefa (MSc Student) received the Canada Graduate Scholarships - Master's award (CGS-M, $27,000) for their research Political lines made divisive: preconceptions, expectations, and the role of nuance in language processing

Why do conversations between progressives and conservatives often become polarizing? Elizabeth's research will look at processing of attitude statements to examine whether using less decisive, more nuanced language ameliorates processing disruptions that arise from expectation-based influences. Psycholinguistic research shows that language processing difficulties from expectation-violating information can be heightened by perceived differences in moral and political views, and that processing difficulties can lead to more negative speaker evaluations and greater difficulty accepting their message. It is not known whether delivering a message using more nuanced language impedes these effects. Elizabeth will use self-paced reading and rating measures to assess Canadian and American participants' processing of progressive and conservative speaker attitude statements. Part one will assess how expectations derived from preconceptions of a speaker’s identity affect more vs. less nuanced language processing to discern whether processing disruptions can be ameliorated by more nuanced language. Part two will examine whether a facilitation in processing leads to more positive evaluations of the speaker. Both parts will also consider the extent that these effects depend on one’s political and moral views. Elizabeth's research will provide further insight into how communication breakdowns may occur around polarizing topics.