Children tend to prefer to be friends with other children who speak with the same local accent as they have, even if they grow up in a diverse community and are regularly exposed to a variety of accents, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.
Previous research has shown that children as young as 5 years old prefer to be friends with peers who speak like them and that these preferences are so strong that they can override preferences for friends of the same race, according to Paquette-Smith.
She and her co-authors wanted to extend the existing research and explore whether regular exposure to a wide variety of accents might change these preferences. The researchers conducted three experiments with nearly 5- and 6-year-old English-speaking children living in the Greater Toronto Area, one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse metropolitan areas in the world. More than half of the residents there were born outside of Canada and close to 50 percent learned a language other than English from birth, the study noted.
In experiment one, 5- and 6-year-olds were shown pairs of children on a computer screen. One child in each pair spoke English with the local Canadian accent and the other spoke English with a British accent. After listening to both speakers, children were asked to pick which child they wanted as their friend.
The researches also examined whether the amount of exposure children had to different accents in everyday life influenced these preferences. Given the diversity in the community, most of the children reported moderate to very frequent contact with non-local accents, whether it was because they lived with someone in their home or had a daycare provider or teacher with a different accent.
