The Role of Accent Status in Children’s Preferences for Teachers in Educational Apps

• In Event: Poster Session 08
  In Poster Session: PS 08 Topic - Social Cognition

Abstract

Accent is one of many cues that inform children’s social learning preferences. Children have been shown to prefer teachers with native accents and view them as more competent than teachers with non-native or non-standard accents (Buckler, Paquette-Smith, & Johnson, 2019). The present study investigates whether media characters’ accents affect children’s social learning preferences, in the context of educational apps.

During the study, Canadian children aged 5-6 and 9-10 years (N = 21, 22) were introduced to a fictional educational app and asked to help select the teaching characters. On each of 8 trials, a subject to be taught was presented, followed by three digital exemplars of a cartoon character that differed visually only in minor ways (e.g., color of tie). The images were randomly paired with an audio recording of a short passage read by an actor that spoke English with either a Canadian, British, or Russian accent. Children were asked to select which exemplar should be the teaching character for each subject in the app. There were two trial types: 4 trials about culturally-neutral subjects (e.g., space, oceans) and 4 trials about culturally-relevant subjects pertinent to Russian culture (e.g., Russian dancing, Russian music). For each accent type, the proportion of selecting characters speaking with that accent was calculated for each trial type.

For each accent type, children’s choice scores were submitted to a repeated-measures ANOVA, with trial type as the within-subjects factor. The results indicated a significant main effect of trial type on children’s choices of Canadian-accented teachers [F(1, 41) = 15.542, p < .001] and Russian-accented teachers F(1, 41) = 6.691, p = .013]. For the British accent, the effect of trial type was not significant. In all three models, the main effect of age group was not significant. Collapsed across age groups, children’s choices were compared to chance responding (.33). For learning subjects pertinent to Russian culture, children chose the Russian-accented teachers significantly more often than would be expected by chance [t(42) = 2.060, p = .046]; they chose the Canadian-accented teachers at a rate significantly below chance [t(42) = -4.826, p < .001]. For the culturally-neutral subjects, children chose the Russian-accented teachers the least often, but overall they responded at rates expected by chance across the three accent types.

These findings suggest that children are sensitive to the spoken accent of teaching characters, and that their preferences for media characters in teaching roles may be influenced by their assumptions about cultural expertise based on accent status. This may provide impetus for children’s media producers to increase inclusion of characters with non-native accents in educational offerings. Children not only accept, but prefer, media characters with non-native accents when learning about culturally-relevant material, suggesting that children’s enjoyment of and engagement in cultural educational media may be boosted by increasing accent diversity.

Authors

• Kathryn Harper, Ryerson University
  Presenting Author

• Sarah Dunnett, Ryerson University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Lili Ma, Ryerson University
  Non-Presenting Author