Uncovering the role of gender stereotypes in speech perception

This work examines the effect of gender stereotypes on the perception of la nguage by drawing together findings from the fields of speech perception, g ender studies, and social psychology. Results from true speech perception e xperiments are reviewed that show that listeners' stereotypes about gender, as activated by the faces and voices of speakers, alter the listeners' per ception of the fricatives /s/ and /integral/. One experiment employs audito ry-only consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) tokens and the other employs audiov isual stimuli created from the same tokens synthesized with talking faces. This effect of stereotypes on low-level speech processing must be accounted for in models of perception, cognition, and the relationship between the p hysical and social environment.