What We Hear Determines What We Say

We might have made up our minds long before any verbal communication is made. Yet a recent study shows that auditory feedback plays a huge role in what we'll actually say. 

"Our results indicate that speakers listen to their own voices to help specify the meaning of what they are saying," said lead study author Andreas Lind of Lund University, via a press release.

For the study, Lind and colleagues recruited Swedish participants to complete a classic Stroop test in which linguistic settings were controlled. During the test, participants were presented with various color words (i.e., "red" or "green") one at a time and asked to match the name of the color with a font that each word was printed on, rather than the color that the word itself represented.

As they took the test, each participant wore headphones to provide real-time auditory feedback. Yet unbeknownst to the participants, the researchers had rigged the feedback with a voice-triggered playback system that substitutes phonologically similar words. Findings showed that about 78 participants indicated that when the timing of the insertions was right, only about one third of exchanges were detected.

Researchers found that on many of the non-detected trials, participants reported the word when they heard feedback rather than the word they had actually said. As the accuracy for this task was very high, manipulated feedback led many participants to believe that they had said something wrong.

Researchers found that overal, findings showed 85 percent of participants accepted the manipulated feedback as having been self-produced on the non-detected variables.

The study authors also found it particularly surprising that many still treated the manipulated words as though they were self-produced.

 "In future studies, we want to apply RSE to situations that are more social and spontaneous - investigating, for example, how exchanged words might influence the way an interview or conversation develops," Lind said, via the release. "While this is technically challenging to execute, it could potentially tell us a great deal about how meaning and communicative intentions are formed in natural discourse."

What do you think?

More information regarding the findings can be seen via the journal Psychological Science.