Who said it—and did it fit the speaker's age? How age-typicality of named objects improves source memory

Memory for who said what can help native and non-native listeners identify critical information for use in conversations. In this study, source memory for object-speaker associations was tested for listeners differing in language background and nativeness. Native and non-native participants of German first heard the voice of a child and an adult speaker name photographs of objects with age-typical characteristics (e.g., a board book for children vs. a standard hardcover novel) before they had to indicate who had previously named each object. Speakers either consistently named objects typical for their age group, or they randomly named objects from both age groups. Both listener groups associated objects with speakers successfully and showed better source memory in the age-consistent condition over the random condition. Critically, non-native listeners performed comparably to native listeners and benefited equally from age-typical patterns, suggesting that stereotypical knowledge about age can facilitate source memory encoding and retrieval even when processing a second language. The results confirm the role of source memory representations in communication and suggest that memory for object-speaker associations based on salient social categories like age remains robust in non-native listening.