Second‐language experience and speech‐in‐noise recognition: The role of talker‐listener accent similarity.

Abstract

There is a clear interaction between native and non‐native accents in speech‐in‐noise recognition, with listeners being better at accents that match their own speech. This study investigated how this talker‐listener interaction is modulated by L2 experience and accent similarity. L1 southern British English (SE) and L1 French listeners with varying L2 English experience (inexperienced, FI; experienced, FE; and bilinguals, FB) were tested on the recognition of English sentences mixed in speech‐shaped noise that were spoken with a range of accents (SE, FE, FI, Northern Irish, and Korean‐accented English). The results demonstrated that FI listeners were more accurate with FI talkers and showed graded sensitivity for all accents. The SE listeners, however, had their recognition processes selectively tuned to their own accent. FE and FB listeners were more similar to SE listeners as their L2 experience increased. In order to account for this interaction, an accent similarity metric was applied to the talkers’ and listeners’ speech. The results demonstrated that there were significant correlations between speech‐in‐noise recognition and the acoustic similarity of the talkers’ and listeners’ accents. Overall, the results suggest that L2 experience affects talker‐listener accent interactions, altering both the intelligibility of different accents and the selectivity of accent processing.