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EFFECTS OF SECOND LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY OF SPEAKERS AND LISTENERS ON PERSON PERCEPTION AND BEHAVIOURAL INTENTION: A STUDY OF CHINESE BILINGUALS
Author(s) -
Hui C. Harry,
Cheng Ivy W.M.
Publication year - 1987
Publication title -
international journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.75
H-Index - 62
eISSN - 1464-066X
pISSN - 0020-7594
DOI - 10.1080/00207598708246783
Subject(s) - psychology , perception , language proficiency , second language , neuroscience of multilingualism , personality , social psychology , linguistics , cognitive psychology , philosophy , neuroscience , pedagogy
Do people at different levels of second language proficiency perceive and interact with other speakers differently? Conceptual analyses suggested three possibilities. An experiment was conducted to evaluate the hypotheses derived from the conceptual analyses. Forty Chinese undergraduates (half of whom were high and half of whom were low in English language proficiency) listened to English speeches by either high or low proficiency speakers, and rated the speakers on ten personality traits and ten behavioural intention items. High and low proficiency listeners did not differ in their impressions of the speakers or the behavioural intention towards them. However, speaker proficiency strongly affected the listeners' person perception and behavioural intention. Results from a hierarchical multiple regression supported the hypothesis that speaker proficiency influenced person perception, which in turn influenced behavioural intention.