Native language experience influences the perception of envelope and temporal fine structure cues.

Abstract

This study examined speakers of American English and Korean languages with normal hearing to assess their ability to understand intact as well as vocoded speech. Speech perception abilities were assessed using vowels, consonants, and consonant-nucleus vowel-consonant (CNC) words belonging to the English language. Stimuli were processed using three different methods: (1) intact speech, (2) temporal envelope speech (E), or (3) temporal fine structure (TFS) speech. It was hypothesized that native speakers would perform better than non-native speakers when acoustic information was limited to envelope and TFS cues. Overall, both groups showed a significant effect of stimulus condition with performance being best for the intact condition, followed by the E- and TFS-conditions, respectively. Between groups, American English speakers outperformed the Korean speakers particularly for E, and TFS-conditions, suggesting that a person’s native language experience provides an advantage when acoustic information is limited to E and TFS cues. Moreover, compared to non-native speakers, we speculate that prior language experience enables native speakers to compare E and TFS cues to an existing memory base so they can better use limited acoustic information. [Work supported by NIH NIDCD Grant No. R01-DC007705 and T32-DC000033.]