Kids start associating accents with intelligence surprisingly early

From the moment we are born (and even before that, in utero), we tune into the languages around us. This includes the accents they are spoken in.

Studies have found that infants show a preference for a familiar accent from as young as five months old. Fast forward to adulthood and it is difficult to find anyone who doesn’t have something to say about accents.

Opinions, criticisms and stereotypes about speakers based on their accent are rife in the UK, and can lead to serious cases of accent discrimination (“accentism”).

But what happens between infancy and adulthood to get to this point? How are we socialised into such biases – and does this happen at an earlier age than we might have thought?

Previous research into accent stereotypes in the US – that northern accents tend to mean “smart” and southern mean “nice” – found that children do not show these adult language stereotypes until the age of nine or ten.

These attitudes were directly expressed in the research study by children responding to the questions “who do you think is nicer?” and “who do you think is smarter?” after hearing audio clips of the different accents. But as these attitudes had been explicitly stated in the questions, there’s a risk the children may have been saying what they thought adults wanted to hear – based on what they thought to be socially acceptable, rather than their honest views.

Less is known about unconscious bias – the attitudes listeners might not be aware they have, but which affect their actions towards speakers with different accents. My recent research with colleagues aimed to explore how children’s more unconscious, embedded and implicit attitudes might manifest.

We focused on the language attitudes of five-year-olds in Essex. We carried out a computer-based experiment in which 27 children were first familiarised with two characters through a short narrated video describing their characteristics.

One was labelled “clever” and could read, write and speak very well. The other was labelled “not clever” and couldn’t read, write or speak well. The narrator of the video had an American-English accent, which did not feature in the experimental part of the study.

The children then took part in a series of matching tasks. For each task, they heard an audio clip featuring a UK accent. Straight after, a picture of either the “clever” or “not clever” character appeared in the centre of the screen. The children were asked to match this picture with one of two smaller pictures (one of the “clever” and one of the “not clever” character) on the left- and right-hand sides of the screen.

The experiment measured their reaction time in matching the characters. A quicker response time indicated the association between accent and character was more compatible, and that they hadn’t been surprised by a mismatch between the accent they heard and the central character on the screen.

The experiment also measured their brain using an electroencephalogram (EEG). This computed the brain’s reaction to the compatibility between the accent and the “clever” or “not clever” character presented centrally on screen.

Standard English

Our results found that across the measures, the five-year-olds showed a strong association between a standard southern English accent – also known as received pronunciation or the Queen’s English – and intelligence. This accords with what we know about how children will grow up to associate standard English as the “correct” form in the UK. Our research suggests that by age five, this association is already fairly well entrenched.

A perhaps more surprising finding from our study was that for one of the brain measures, the children were also found to associate the Essex accent – their home accent – with intelligence. This contrasts with previous research which found negative attitudes towards the Essex accent among young adults in south-east England.

This finding is interesting because it tells us there is perhaps an ongoing familiarity effect from five months old – children may be more positive towards the accent they find more familiar.

The final accent that featured in our study was the Yorkshire accent. Our results found that, for one of the brain measures, the children associated the Yorkshire accent with unintelligence.

This corresponds with the prevalent accent prejudice against northern accents in the UK. Worryingly, this finding again suggests that bias has may have already become embedded in children who are only just starting school.

The culminating finding of our work relates to the children’s exposure to accent diversity. Children who had been exposed to a broader range of accents at home, with one or more parents from outside Essex, were more positive towards different accents overall. They were less likely to associate any of them with unintelligence.

Children are not born judging speakers to be uneducated based on the way they speak. It is something they are socialised into believing. Our research suggests that exposure to accent variation may be key in tackling accent discrimination from a young age.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.