Context effects in recognition of German disyllabic words and nonwords by native and non-native listeners

Abstract

Thirty-two native (L1=German) and 30 non-native (L1=English) listeners heard German CVCCVC words and nonwords mixed with noise. Of the words, half were monomorphemic and half bimorphemic. The j-factor model [Boothroyd and Nittrouer, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 84, 101–114 (1988)] was used as a measure of lexical context effects. For both native and non-native speakers, words showed greater context effects than nonwords, though the difference was not as large for non-native speakers. Monomorphemic words also exhibited greater context effects than bimorphemic words, again with a larger effect for native speakers. For both native and non-native listeners, neighborhood density had a significant effect, although the amount of variation explained was much less for non-native listeners. This is interpreted to be a result of the smaller lexicon of the non-native listeners. Misperceptions between native and non-native speakers were also compared, with non-native speakers showing patterns predictable by phonological differences between the two languages. The j-factor results extend previous research using CVC stimuli, providing additional support for its efficacy as a measure of context effects. The j-factor results also provide a new finding, in that jword does not seem to scale linearly with word length. [Work supported by NIH/NIDCD.]