A new study explored the biases children have toward different accents. The study was published in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology.
According to the data, it was unveiled that children tend to prefer teachers with a local accent as opposed to non-native or regional accents.
“Here, we begin to address these questions by examining children’s sociolinguistic biases against teachers who speak with different accents,” the authors elaborated in their paper.
“To do this, we presented 5-year-old Canadian English-speaking children with pairs of adult talkers. Children were asked to select who they’d like to be their teacher then they rated “how good of a teacher” they thought each talker would be on a 5-point scale.”
The authors concluded that at the onset of formal education, starting at around at the age of five, children may show signs of accent-based biases.
“Taken together, this work suggests that even before children turn 5, they are already beginning to evaluate teachers who belong to their accent in-group more favourably,” the authors contended.
