Abstract
This study investigated how speech recognition in noise is affected by language proficiency for individual non-native speakers. The recognition of English and Chinese sentences was measured as a function of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in sixty native Chinese speakers who never lived in an English-speaking environment. The recognition score for speech in quiet (which varied from 15%–92%) was found to be uncorrelated with speech recognition threshold (SRTQ /2), i.e. the SNR at which the recognition score drops to 50% of the recognition score in quiet. This result demonstrates separable contributions of language proficiency and auditory processing to speech recognition in noise.
Highlights
Speech recognition is robust to noise when normal hearing listeners listen to their native language, but this robustness is impaired for non-native listeners [1] and hearing impaired listeners [2]
The speech recognition threshold (SRT) is either defined as the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at which the recognition score drops to 50% of Q, referred to as SRTQ/2, or the SNR at which the recognition score drops to 50% correct, referred to as SRT50%
Non-Native Speech Listening in Noise individual listeners’ recognition score averaged over all SNR conditions (Figure 1B). These group-wise psychometric functions are well separated from each other, but this clear separation disappears when each function is normalized by its mean over all SNR conditions (Figure 1C)
Summary
Speech recognition is robust to noise when normal hearing listeners listen to their native language, but this robustness is impaired for non-native listeners [1] and hearing impaired listeners [2]. As non-native listeners can dramatically vary in their language proficiency even when they all have normal auditory and cognitive abilities, this population can provide insights into the effects of individual listeners’ language proficiency on their speech recognition in noise. Non-native listeners who have a speech recognition score near ceiling in quiet, i.e. Q is approximately 100%, have increased susceptibility to noise, shown by an elevated SRT [4,5]. Within the population of low-proficiency non-native listeners whose speech recognition scores fall far below 100% even in quiet, it remains unclear how language proficiency influences the robustness of speech recognition in noise, e.g., as measured by the SRT
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