English Listeners Research Articles

Hesitations in story retelling as a measure of listening effort

Hesitation phenomena in natural speech (e.g., pauses, word repetitions, or phrase repairs) vary as a function of speaker characteristics, with non-native speakers typically hesitating more than native speakers (Gilquin, 2008). Here, we examine whether hesitations can also reflect listeners’ mental effort required to comprehend native and non-native speech. We asked native English listeners to retell stories told by either a native or a non-native speaker and analyzed their hesitations using a 6-category taxonomy: filler vocalizations, filler words, filler nonspeech, self-monitoring, uptalk, and point of view switching. These story-retell behavioral data were obtained after recording their brain responses during listening to the stories using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) and speaker-listener interbrain synchrony technique (hyperscanning). We found a higher hesitation rate for retelling of stories produced by a non-native (11.2%) than a native speaker (7.6%), with significant increase in hesitation frequency for the former. The hesitations corroborated brain responses: Listeners had greater difficulty processing discourse in non-native English and the recruitment of additional executive resources delayed comprehension and memory processes. The analysis of hesitations is a promising approach in measuring speaker-listener communicative effort because hesitations increase as uncertainty of interpretation increases, suggesting greater demands on working memory during lexical and semantic operations.

Exploring Individual Differences in Rating Second Language Speech: Rater's Language Aptitude, Major, Accent Familiarity, and Attitudes

AbstractThis study is the first attempt to explore the relationship between rater variables focusing on raters’ language aptitude and their judgments of second language (L2) speech. Thirty‐four English listeners rated 65 spontaneous native and nonnative speech samples for comprehensibility, accentedness, and fluency. They also completed the LLAMA language aptitude test for associate memory, phonetic memory, sound‐symbol associations, and grammatical inferencing. The results of mixed effect models showed that native listeners’ individual differences (i.e., language aptitude, major, accent familiarity and attitudes) altogether explained 10‐12% of L2 speech ratings. A particularly novel finding is that all aptitude components exhibited significant effects on the ratings. Specifically, associative memory exhibited a positive association whereas and phonetic memory, sound‐symbol associations, and grammatical inferencing had a negative association with the ratings. The findings have a potential to enhance our understanding of the complex dynamics involved in nonnative speech perception and L2 interaction, and implications for researchers and educators in SLA, language assessment, and education.

Word Recognition in English Place Assimilation by L1 and L2 Listeners: An Eye Tracking Study

This study explores the dynamics of lexical activation by comparing the time course of word recognition between assimilated forms (e.g., ca[tp] in cat box) and noncoronal forms (e.g., ca[p] in cap box). Using the Visual World Paradigm, an eye-tracking method, the main goal was to investigate how gradient modification in place assimilation context influences L1 and L2 listeners’ real time word recognition in English. Twenty native Korean learners of English, as well as fourteen native English listeners took part in the listening task integrated into the eye-tracking experiment. The participants were given aural input in the form of instructions (e.g., look at the cat/cap box) and asked to pick the word they had just heard between two options (e.g., cat or cap) on the screen while or after they listened to the input. Their eye movements over the visual screen while listening, along with their keyboard-press responses were recorded for the main analysis. The results showed both English and Korean listeners displayed higher proportions of fixations on the target (e.g., cat) than on the competitor words (e.g., cap) in assimilation contexts (e.g., ca[tp] box), as well as higher proportions of fixations on targets (e.g., cap) than on competitors (e.g., cat) in non-assimilation contexts (e.g., ca[p] box). However, the discrepancy of fixation proportions between targets and competitors was more obvious for the English listeners than for the Korean listeners. In other words, although the L2 listenersin addition to L1 listeners were able to use acoustic variations when identifying the target phonemes, the L1 listeners revealed a higher certainty level than their L2 counterparts. Furthermore, the divergence points between targets and competitors wereshown to appear earlier for the L1 listeners than for the L2 listeners.

Recognition of foreign-accented vocoded speech by native English listeners

Recognition of foreign-accented vocoded speech by native English listeners

Non-native talkers and listeners and the perceptual benefits of clear speech.

This study examined the intelligibility benefit of native and non-native clear speech for native and non-native listeners when the first language background of non-native talkers and listeners is matched. All four combinations of talkers and listeners were tested: native talker-native listener, non-native talker-native listener, native talker-non-native listener, and non-native talker-non-native listener. Listeners were presented with structurally simple but semantically anomalous English sentences produced clearly or casually and mixed with speech-shaped noise at 0 dB signal-to-noise ratio and asked to write down what they heard. Results showed that native English speech was more intelligible than non-native speech and that native English listeners recovered speech better than non-native listeners did. Clear speech was significantly more intelligible than casual speech. There were no interactions between speaking style and native language background indicating that clear speech intelligibility benefit was not significantly different across distinct combinations of talkers and listeners. In particular, shared first language background among non-native speakers and listeners did not provide an extra benefit in either the overall speech intelligibility or the intelligibility gains of clear speech.

Effect of Background Noise on PTE Listening Test Scores for Korean and Native English Listeners

This study compares the effect that background noise has on the listening comprehension scores on the Pearson Test of English between first language (L1) English listeners and Korean, second language (L2) listeners of English. The extent to which L2 listeners are at a greater disadvantage when listening to more complex academic sentences in noise requires further investigation. A group of 16 Korean L2 listeners and a comparison group of 11 L1 English listeners were asked to repeat academic sentences in quiet, a small amount of noise and a greater amount of noise. L2 listeners obtained significantly poorer word recognition scores when listening in a larger amount of noise compared to when listening in the two other conditions. In addition, L2 listeners attained lower word recognition scores than native listeners across all three conditions.

Perceptual integrality of foreign segmental and tonal information: Dimensional transfer hypothesis

AbstractThis study investigates whether (a) Cantonese and (b) English listeners integrally or independently perceive Thai tone and segmental information. Listeners completed a modified AX discrimination task that contained a control block (without segmental variation) and an orthogonal block (with segmental variation). Relative to their own performance in the control block, the Cantonese listeners showed increased response time, decreased proportion of accuracy, and decreased sensitivity index in the orthogonal block. By contrast, the English listeners showed similar response time, proportion of accuracy, and sensitivity index across the two blocks. These reflect integral processing among the Cantonese but not the English listeners. This finding motivates the dimensional transfer hypothesis. The hypothesis posits that L1 perceptual experience shapes the perceptual integrality (or nonintegrality) of foreign suprasegmental and segmental information.

Why Aren't All Cantonese Tones Equally Confusing to English Listeners?

English listeners often struggle to perceive tones, but some are easier than others. This study examined these phenomena grounded in the feature weighing perspective (FWP) and the Perceptual Assimilation Model for Suprasegmentals (PAM-S). Forty-seven English and Cantonese listeners completed 4,212 trials of Cantonese tone discrimination and sequence recall tasks. The English listeners showed asymmetrical perceptual patterns of discrimination but not sequence recall. Specifically, these English listeners discriminated T1-T5, T3-T5, and T4-T5 more accurately than T1-T4, T3-T4, and T1-T3. However, they recalled the contour tone and level tone sequences with similar accuracies. Results of the discrimination task aligned with the predictions of PAM-S but not FWP. However, results of the sequence recall task did not support PAM-S. Together, these results suggest that PAM-S only applies to simple discrimination, not abstract phonological processing with a high memory load.

The role of L1-L2 dissimilarity in L2 segment learning - Implications from the acquisition of English post-alveolar fricatives by Mandarin and Mandarin/Wu speakers.

This study examines how the concept of L1-L2 dissimilarity should be addressed from a two-way perspective in L2 segment learning, and how it relates to the learning outcomes. We achieved this by investigating the productions of the post-alveolar fricatives /ʃ, ʒ/ by Mandarin and Mandarin/Wu speakers, which were subsequently assessed by native English listeners. In the first experiment, we analyzed the spectral moments of /ʃ, ʒ/ produced by Mandarin monolingual and Mandarin/Wu bilingual speakers to find out how the two groups of speakers pronounced the target segments. In the second experiment, native English listeners were tasked with rating the accentedness of the Mandarin- and Mandarin/Wu-accented /ʃ, ʒ/. Results showed native English listeners scored Mandarin/Wu-accented /ʃ/ as having no accent and Mandarin-accented /ʒ/ as having a heavy accent, indicating that English natives perceived the 'native vs. nonnative' segment dissimilarity differently from Chinese learners of English, and that the L1-L2 dissimilarity perceived from both sides may work together in defining the L2 segment learning outcomes.

Intelligibility and the gravity of segmental deviations in L1 Finnish speakers’ L2 English

The goal of English pronunciation teaching has shifted from native-likeness to intelligibility. Especially in EFL contexts, pushing learners to sound like L1 speakers is difficult to justify, whereas becoming intelligible is an easily justifiable, practical learning goal. However, EFL teachers often emphasize the sounds that are typically challenging for their learners, even though all sounds are not equally important for intelligibility. The present study is focussed on the extent to which segmental deviations can compromise intelligibility. Speech samples were elicited from teenaged L1 Finnish learners of English, demonstrating segmental deviations typical of the target group. To evaluate the gravity of segmental deviation, an intelligibility test was arranged with L1 English listeners. Results suggest that the sounds under investigation can be ranked into groups based on how crucial they are for intelligibility. The ranking can help EFL teachers to prioritize the critical sounds over those that are unlikely to compromise intelligibility.

The Relationship between Non-Native Perception and Phonological Patterning of Implosive Consonants.

This study uses non-native perception data to examine the relationship between perceived phonetic similarity of segments and their phonological patterning. Segments that are phonetically similar to one another are anticipated to pattern together phonologically, and segments that share articulatory or acoustic properties are also expected to be perceived as similar. What is not yet clear is whether segments that pattern together phonologically are perceived as similar. This study addresses this question by examining how L1 English listeners and L1 Guébie listeners perceive non-native implosive consonants compared with plosives and sonorants. English does not have contrastive implosives, whereas Guébie has a bilabial implosive. The bilabial implosive phonologically patterns with sonorants in Guébie, to the exclusion of obstruents. Two perception experiments show English listeners make more perceptual categorization errors between implosives and voiced plosives than Guébie listeners do, but both listener groups are more likely to classify implosives as similar to voiced plosives than sonorants. The results also show that Guébie listeners are better at categorizing non-native implosive consonants (i.e., alveolar implosives) than English listeners, showing that listeners are able to extend features or gestures from their L1 to non-native implosive consonants. The results of these experiments suggest a cross-linguistic perceptual similarity hierarchy of implosives compared with other segments that are not affected by L1 phonological patterning.

Explaining L2 Lexical Learning in Multiple Scenarios: Cross-Situational Word Learning in L1 Mandarin L2 English Speakers.

Adults commonly struggle with perceiving and recognizing the sounds and words of a second language (L2), especially when the L2 sounds do not have a counterpart in the learner's first language (L1). We examined how L1 Mandarin L2 English speakers learned pseudo English words within a cross-situational word learning (CSWL) task previously presented to monolingual English and bilingual Mandarin-English speakers. CSWL is ambiguous because participants are not provided with direct mappings of words and object referents. Rather, learners discern word-object correspondences through tracking multiple co-occurrences across learning trials. The monolinguals and bilinguals tested in previous studies showed lower performance for pseudo words that formed vowel minimal pairs (e.g., /dit/-/dɪt/) than pseudo word which formed consonant minimal pairs (e.g., /bɔn/-/pɔn/) or non-minimal pairs which differed in all segments (e.g., /bɔn/-/dit/). In contrast, L1 Mandarin L2 English listeners struggled to learn all word pairs. We explain this seemingly contradicting finding by considering the multiplicity of acoustic cues in the stimuli presented to all participant groups. Stimuli were produced in infant-directed-speech (IDS) in order to compare performance by children and adults and because previous research had shown that IDS enhances L1 and L2 acquisition. We propose that the suprasegmental pitch variation in the vowels typical of IDS stimuli might be perceived as lexical tone distinctions for tonal language speakers who cannot fully inhibit their L1 activation, resulting in high lexical competition and diminished learning during an ambiguous word learning task. Our results are in line with the Second Language Linguistic Perception (L2LP) model which proposes that fine-grained acoustic information from multiple sources and the ability to switch between language modes affects non-native phonetic and lexical development.

Validating Four Hmong Word Recognition Tests With Normal-Hearing Bilingual Hmong Individuals

The purpose of this study was to validate four digitally recorded and phonetically balanced 50-word recognition lists in the White Hmong dialect with normal-hearing bilingual Hmong adults. Using a randomized, incomplete-block design, each participant listened to and repeated four unique Hmong lists delivered by a female and a male talker. Participants were also tested with an English word list-List 1A of the Northwestern University Auditory Test No. 6. Participants' correct pronunciation of each word was scored. A nonparametric Mann-Whitney U Location Difference Test for Equivalence using two one-sided tests equivalence hypothesis: -0.02 < [(List_1) - (List_2)] < 0.02 was conducted to assess equivalence among all four Hmong and the English lists. Seventy Hmong speakers participated in this study (35 women, 35 men; M age = 29.5 years, SD = 7.1). In all four Hmong lists, 93.5% (187/200) words met the validation criteria for ≥ 92% correct pronunciation. The 13 difficult words were deemed adequate by a Hmong panel and, therefore, were included to maintain four unique, balanced word lists. The test revealed that the Hmong and English word lists were considered equivalent at the 2% bound. The four Hmong word lists were validated to ensure an equal range of word difficulty across the lists.

Assessment of L2 intelligibility: Comparing L1 listeners and automatic speech recognition

AbstractAn increasing number of studies are exploring the benefits of automatic speech recognition (ASR)–based dictation programs for second language (L2) pronunciation learning (e.g. Chen, Inceoglu &amp; Lim, 2020; Liakin, Cardoso &amp; Liakina, 2015; McCrocklin, 2019), but how ASR recognizes accented speech and the nature of the feedback it provides to language learners is still largely under-researched. The current study explores whether the intelligibility of L2 speakers differs when assessed by native (L1) listeners versus ASR technology, and reports on the types of intelligibility issues encountered by the two groups. Twelve L1 listeners of English transcribed 48 isolated words targeting the /ɪ-i/ and /æ-ε/ contrasts and 24 short sentences that four Taiwanese intermediate learners of English had produced using Google’s ASR dictation system. Overall, the results revealed lower intelligibility scores for the word task (ASR: 40.81%, L1 listeners: 38.62%) than the sentence task (ASR: 75.52%, L1 listeners: 83.88%), and highlighted strong similarities in the error types – and their proportions – identified by ASR and the L1 listeners. However, despite similar recognition scores, correlations indicated that the ASR recognition of the L2 speakers’ oral productions mirrored the L1 listeners’ judgments of intelligibility in the word and sentence tasks for only one speaker, with significant positive correlations for one additional speaker in each task. This suggests that the extent to which ASR approaches L1 listeners at recognizing accented speech may depend on individual speakers and the type of oral speech.

Clinical Features of Patients Hospitalized for All Routes of Anthrax, 1880-2018: A Systematic Review.

Anthrax is a toxin-mediated zoonotic disease caused by Bacillus anthracis, with a worldwide distribution recognized for millennia. Bacillus anthracis is considered a potential biowarfare agent. We completed a systematic review for clinical and demographic characteristics of adults and children hospitalized with anthrax (cutaneous, inhalation, ingestion, injection [from contaminated heroin], primary meningitis) abstracted from published case reports, case series, and line lists in English from 1880 through 2018, assessing treatment impact by type and severity of disease. We analyzed geographic distribution, route of infection, exposure to anthrax, and incubation period. Data on 764 adults and 167 children were reviewed. Most cases reported for 1880 through 1915 were from Europe; those for 1916 through 1950 were from North America; and from 1951 on, cases were from Asia. Cutaneous was the most common form of anthrax for all populations. Since 1960, adult anthrax mortality has ranged from 31% for cutaneous to 90% for primary meningitis. Median incubation periods ranged from 1 day (interquartile range [IQR], 0-4) for injection to 7 days (IQR, 4-9) for inhalation anthrax. Most patients with inhalation anthrax developed pleural effusions and more than half with ingestion anthrax developed ascites. Treatment and critical care advances have improved survival for those with systemic symptoms, from approximately 30% in those untreated to approximately 70% in those receiving antimicrobials or antiserum/antitoxin. This review provides an improved evidence base for both clinical care of individual anthrax patients and public health planning for wide-area aerosol releases of B. anthracis spores.

What Is "Music" in Music-to-Language Transfer? Musical Ability But Not Musicianship Supports Cantonese Listeners' English Stress Perception.

This study investigates how Cantonese language experience influences the potential effects of (a) musicianship and (b) musical ability on English stress perception. The sample contained 124 participants, evenly split into Cantonese musician, Cantonese nonmusician, English musician, and English nonmusician groups. They completed the English stress discrimination task, English stress sequence recall task, Musical Ear Test, and nonverbal intelligence task. Following the musicianship-based analysis, 44 Cantonese and English listeners were reassigned to four groups based on their musical ability-Cantonese high musical ability, Cantonese low musical ability, English high musical ability, and English low musical ability groups. Musicianship-based analysis on English stress perception revealed a significant interaction between musicianship and language. Specifically, musicians outperformed nonmusicians only among the English but not the Cantonese listeners. By contrast, ability-based analysis showed significant main effects of musical ability and language. For both Cantonese and English listeners, those with a high musical ability outperformed those with a low musical ability. Regardless of musical ability, Cantonese listeners outperformed English listeners. Correlational analyses yielded consistent findings. This study has found cross-sectional evidence that musical ability, but not musicianship, facilitates Cantonese English as a second language (ESL) listeners' English stress perception. From a theoretical perspective, the current findings motivate two potential additions to the OPERA (Overlap, Precision, Emotion, Repetition, and Attention) hypothesis for music-to-language transfer-unsaturation and utilization. Practically, the findings cast doubt on the application of nonperceptual based instrumental music training to enhance Cantonese ESL learners' perceptual learning of English stress. https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.21266478.

The perception of intonational and emotional speech prosody produced with and without a face mask: an exploratory individual differences study

Face masks affect the transmission of speech and obscure facial cues. Here, we examine how this reduction in acoustic and facial information affects a listener’s understanding of speech prosody. English sentence pairs that differed in their intonational (statement/question) and emotional (happy/sad) prosody were created. These pairs were recorded by a masked and unmasked speaker and manipulated to contain audio or not. This resulted in a continuum from typical unmasked speech with audio (easiest) to masked speech without audio (hardest). English listeners (N = 129) were tested on their discrimination of these statement/question and happy/sad pairs. We also collected six individual difference measures previously reported to affect various linguistic processes: Autism Spectrum Quotient, musical background, phonological short-term memory (digit span, 2-back), and congruence task (flanker, Simon) behavior. The results indicated that masked statement/question and happy/sad prosodies were harder to discriminate than unmasked prosodies. Masks can therefore make it more difficult to understand a speaker’s intended intonation or emotion. Importantly, listeners differed considerably in their ability to understand prosody. When wearing a mask, speakers should try to speak clearer and louder, if possible, and make intentions and emotions explicit to the listener.

Exploring the need for language-specific hearing aid signal processing

Speech phonemes in higher frequencies have varying acoustic characteristics in different languages. For example, /s/ and /ʃ/, fricatives commonly used in English, have spectral peaks at higher frequencies than /ʂ/ and /x/, fricatives commonly used in Mandarin. Data on the relationship between the acoustic characteristics of a listener’s native language and their hearing aid signal prescription requirements could provide important clinical guidance. Non-linear frequency compression is a digital signal processing tool that compresses auditory information above a pre-determined cutoff frequency. In hearing aids, this compression is applied with the intention of making higher-frequency speech sounds more audible to listeners with high-frequency hearing loss. Here, we studied the effect of different frequency compression settings on fricative perception between Mandarin and English listeners. Normal-hearing participants between age 18 to 50 years were presented with fricative identification and fricative discrimination tasks under various frequency compression settings. Participants were grouped between those with exclusive English language background birth to 6 years to those with exclusive Mandarin language background during the same period. Results display different responses for presented phonemes and frequency compression settings, suggesting that language specificity could be considered for hearing aid signal prescription.

A cross-linguistic study of audio-aerotactile perceptual integration using voicing continua

Previous studies on multimodal integration in speech perception have found that not only auditory and visual cues, but also tactical sensation—such as an air-puff on skin that simulates aspiration—can be integrated in the perception of speech sounds (Gick &amp; Derrick, 2009). However, most previous investigations have been conducted with English listeners, and it remains uncertain whether such multisensory integration can be shaped by linguistic experience. The current study investigates audio-aerotactile integration in phoneme perception for three groups: English, French monolingual and English-French bilingual listeners. Six step VOT continua of labial (/ba/—/pa/) and alveolar (/da/—/ta/) stops constructed from both English and French endpoint models were presented to listeners who performed a forced-choice identification task. Air-puffs synchronized to syllable onset and applied to the hand at random increased the number of ‘voiceless’ responses for the /da/—/ta/ continuum by both English and French listeners, which suggests that audio-aerotactile integration can occur even though some of the listeners did not have aspiration/non-aspiration contrasts in their native language. Furthermore, bilingual speakers showed larger air-puff effects for English stimuli compared to English monolinguals, which suggests a complex relationship between linguistic experience and multisensory integration in perception.

Digging into sentence intelligibility: Interactions with talker

An implicit feature found in studies of intelligibility and perception is the assumption that noise masks all spoken-sentence stimuli equivalently regardless of the stimulus-talker. For example, when using controlled and normed sentences, such as the IEEE Harvard set, the mean intelligibility across talkers should be affected by masker-noise equivalently. In other words, any particular sentence spoken by one talker should be equivalently intelligible to when it is spoken by another talker using the same style and rate. However, previous studies have shown that there is significant intelligibility variation between talkers in controlled stimuli. Therefore, we predict talker-masker interactions in the IEEE stimuli. We investigated the UAW speech intelligibility dataset which contains typed responses from over 900 native listeners of English to over 604 sentences from the UWNU IEEE sentence corpus presented in three signal-to-noise ratios ( + 2, 0, −2 dB). We calculated the Levenshtein Distance for the listeners’ transcriptions of the sentences. We find that different talkers have different intrinsic intelligibility even when reading the same set of sentences. Moreover, we find an interaction with SNR level and individual talker intelligibility. The present results suggest that individual talker effects in speech stimuli may influence the outcomes of perception and intelligibility studies.