Feeling of Another's Knowing: Does Speaker-Specific Information Have an Effect on Judgements of Confidence and Correctness?

Previous research has established that feeling of another’s knowing (FOAK) can be judged from the paralinguistic cues present in speakers’ utterances (Brennan & Williams, 1995). The current study investigates whether this is an automatic process or whether information about the speaker has an influence, developing the claim made from Arnold, Kam and Tanenhaus’ (2007) investigation. Participants heard two speakers with disfluent utterances in a 2 (neutral story vs. biased story) x 3 (no pause vs. silent pause vs. filled pause) within-subjects design and rated the speakers for feelings of confidence and correctness. It was found that the variable of speech had a significant main effect on both confidence and correctness ratings but no effect of story was demonstrated. Although the results from Arnold et al.’s (2007) study were not replicated, the researchers acknowledge the limits of the current design and conclude that a more comprehensive study is needed in order to determine how these FOAK judgements are made.