Presenter: Zoë Haupt − Communication Disorders and Sciences
Faculty Mentor(s): Melissa Baese-Berk
Session: (In-Person) Poster Presentation
When attempting to detect a lie, numerous social and linguistic factors influence the perception of whether the speaker is telling the truth or lying. The current study investigates how pausing and dialect influence listeners’ judgments of truthfulness. Pauses are often associated with deceptive behavior, but it is unclear how the specific acoustic qualities of pauses affect the listeners’ perception of deception. An additional factor that has been shown to influence listener judgments is the dialect of the speaker. Speakers who use African American English (AAE) dialects, for example, are perceived as less credible than speakers who use a Standard American English (SAE) variety. In this study, bidialectal speakers recorded several narratives using both AAE and SAE. Listeners were asked to rate how truthful each speaker is after listening to a recording of a narrative via an online survey. Pause duration and the dialect used by the talker were manipulated to investigate the contributions of each factor to the perception of deception. The findings of this study will contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the interaction between social biases and speech perception, linguistic markers associated with deception, and listeners’ perceptions and judgments of pausing and dialects.