Empathetic hearers perceive repetitions as less disfluent, especially in non-broadcast situations

Abstract

This experiment measures the impact of the communicative situation on perceived fluency in French speech. We consider three dimensions of fluency: grammatical, discursive and socio-interpersonal. We first hypothesise that grammatical fluency is less influenced by contextual constraints than the other two dimensions. Furthermore, taking into account the Interpersonal Reactivity Index of each participant, we hypothesise that hearers with higher interpersonal capacities will be more tolerant in their fluency evaluation, because of their ability to project into the speaker's mind. The strength of the design rests on the proposal to test natural stimuli and integrate social and individual variables in a perception experiment.