Graduation Semester and Year
Fall 2025
Language
English
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science in Psychology
Department
Psychology
First Advisor
Michelle P. Martín-Raugh
Second Advisor
Larry R. Martinez
Third Advisor
Nicholas A. Smith
Abstract
This study investigated whether automatic speech recognition (ASR) captioning influences hiring recommendations for accented candidates through processing fluency. Participants (N = 342) were randomly assigned to view interviews with no captions, inaccurate captions (21% word error rate), or accurate captions (0% errors). Interview stimuli featured candidates speaking with strong non-standard English accents. Both accurate and inaccurate captions significantly increased processing fluency compared to no captions, with medium effect sizes. Processing fluency, in turn, positively predicted hiring recommendations and mediated the effects of captioning on outcomes. Indirect effects were significant for both contrasts, and the model explained 33% of the variance in hiring recommendations. These findings demonstrate that captions enhance comprehension of accented speech and indirectly improve hiring outcomes, underscoring processing fluency as a key mechanism in technology-enabled interviews and the importance of caption accuracy in reducing bias.
Keywords
Technology-enabled hiring, hiring decisions, processing fluency, Accent bias, Virtual interviews, Caption accuracy
Disciplines
Industrial and Organizational Psychology | Psychology | Social and Behavioral Sciences
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Smith, Katrisha M., "THE IMPACT OF AUTOMATIC SPEECH RECOGNITION ON PROCESSING FLUENCY AND HIRING RECOMMENDATIONS ON ACCENTED CANDIDATES" (2025). Psychology Theses. 170.
https://mavmatrix.uta.edu/psychology_theses/170