# Listening to Foreign Languages: Pump Up the Volume!

## TL;DR

This study shows that people perceive real words as louder than nonsense words in both their native and second languages, suggesting a general cognitive effect.

## Contribution

The study replicates the word height superiority illusion in the auditory domain and compares it across native and second languages.

## Key findings

- Words were perceived louder than pseudowords in both L1 and L2 for French speakers.
- The illusion was stronger in the native language for French speakers but similar for English speakers.
- The auditory illusion suggests a general cognitive mechanism beyond visual perception.

## Abstract

In this study, we investigated whether the visual “word height superiority illusion” (New et al., 2016) could be found in the auditory modality. In two experiments, participants listened to a word–word or word–pseudoword pair of the same or different intensity and judged whether one was louder than the other. They judged stimuli from their native language (L1) and second language (L2). In Experiment 1 with native French speakers, we found that words were perceived louder than pseudowords in the L1 (French) and the L2 (English). Moreover, the illusion was stronger in the L1 (French) than in the L2 (English). In Experiment 2 with native English speakers, we replicated the illusion both in the L1 (English) and the L2 (French) but to a similar extent. Overall, we replicated the visual word height superiority illusion in the auditory modality, which suggests that this may reflect a more general cognitive mechanism.