Acoustic-perceptual credibility correlates of news reading by native and Chinese speakers of Italian

This study addresses the relationship between foreign accent and credibility. Three hundred native Italian listeners, after hearing a set of 12 news uttered in Italian by two native speakers of Italian and two native speakers of Chinese, were asked to assess the truthfulness of each news item. There was no evidence of a correlation between degree of accent and credibility, while results revealed the relevance of other factors such as tonal range and duration of silent pauses. Results of spectro-acoustic analysis were experimentally verified through perceptual tests conducted on artificially modified speech administered to 120 native Italian listeners. These findings may have implications for the selection of speech modalities in order to improve credibility of news delivered to native listeners by either native or non-native speakers.