Spoken Interaction with Computers in a Native or Non-Native Language - Same of Different?

This study examines the effects of interacting with voice interfaces in an ingroup or an outgroup accent, for both native and non-native but competent English speakers. In a balanced, between-subjects experiment, (N = 96), ingroup and outgroup participants were randomly paired with one of two types of computer speech outputs: 1) computer speech output accent which matched the participants’ accent or 2) computer speech output accent which mismatched with the participants’ accent. The content of the output was identical in all the conditions. Participants’ matched with accents similar to their own showed strong similarity-attraction effects. The matched users 1) disclosed socially undesirable behaviors they engage in, to a much larger extent, 2) found the interviewer to be endowed with more socially rich attributes, 3) perceived the interviewer to be more sociable. In short, similarity of accent is more important than ‘correctness’of the accent when interacting with a computer. We discuss implications of these results for HCI design.