Abstract
Purpose: To investigate the effect of listener's native language (L1) and the types of noise on English vowel identification in noise.Method: Identification of 12 English vowels was measured in quiet and in long-term speech-shaped noise and multi-talker babble (MTB) noise for English- (EN), Chinese- (CN) and Korean-native (KN) listeners at various signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs).Results: Compared to non-native listeners, EN listeners performed significantly better in quiet and in noise. Vowel identification in long-term speech-shaped noise and in MTB noise was similar between CN and KN listeners. This is different from our previous study in which KN listeners performed better than CN listeners in English sentence recognition in MTB noise.Discussion: Results from the current study suggest that depending on speech materials, the effect of non-native listeners' L1 on speech perception in noise may be different. That is, in the perception of speech materials with little linguistic cues like isolated vowels, the characteristics of non-native listener's native language may not play a significant role. On the other hand, in the perception of running speech in which listeners need to use more linguistic cues (e.g., acoustic-phonetic, semantic, and prosodic cues), the non-native listener's native language background might result in a different masking effect.
Highlights
It is often challenging for listeners to recognize speech in the presence of background noise, especially when the speech signal is degraded or the listener is unfamiliar with the speech signal as well as the background noise (Jin and Liu, 2012)
This is different from our previous study in which KN listeners performed better than CN listeners in English sentence recognition in multi-talker babble (MTB) noise
Results from the current study suggest that depending on speech materials, the effect of non-native listeners’ L1 on speech perception in noise may be different
Summary
It is often challenging for listeners to recognize speech in the presence of background noise, especially when the speech signal is degraded or the listener is unfamiliar with the speech signal as well as the background noise (Jin and Liu, 2012). Jin and Liu (2012) found that consistent with the previous studies, EN listeners performed better in all listening conditions, showing the “native advantage” and had greater masking release than did CN and KN listeners They found that KN listeners showed significantly better performance than CN listeners in MTB even though no difference was found between the two non-native listener groups in sentence recognition in quiet and in steady-state noise. Based on such results, Jin and Liu (2012) hypothesized that listeners’ speech perceptual strategy in noise might depend on the linguistic characteristics of their native language. The goal of this study was to examine the later possibility regarding the processing of acoustic-phonetic cues for native and non-native listeners
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