Adaptation to novel foreign-accented speech and retention of benefit following training: Influence of aging and hearing loss

Abstract

Adaptation to speech with a foreign accent is possible through prior exposure to talkers with that same accent. For young listeners with normal hearing, short term, accent-independent adaptation to a novel foreign accent is also facilitated through exposure training with multiple foreign accents. In the present study, accent-independent adaptation is examined in younger and older listeners with normal hearing and older listeners with hearing loss. Retention of training benefit is additionally explored. Stimuli for testing and training were HINT sentences recorded by talkers with nine distinctly different accents. Following two training sessions, all listener groups showed a similar increase in speech perception for a novel foreign accent. While no group retained this benefit at one week post-training, results of a secondary reaction time task revealed a decrease in reaction time following training, suggesting reduced listening effort. Examination of listeners' cognitive skills reveals a positive relationship between working memory and speech recognition ability. The present findings indicate that, while this no-feedback training paradigm for foreign-accented English is successful in promoting short term adaptation for listeners, this paradigm is not sufficient in facilitation of perceptual learning with lasting benefits for younger or older listeners.

Effects of Familiarization on Intelligibility of Dysarthric Speech in Older Adults With and Without Hearing Loss

“…Thus, neither age nor hearing status appeared to affect the listener's ability to learn something useful about the degraded speech during the familiarization task. The present findings are consistent with previous work that examined the effect of listener age on perception of and adaptation to a novel accent following familiarization (Adank & Janse, 2010;Bieber & Gordon-Salant, 2017). Although older adults have been demonstrated to perform less accurately overall relative to their younger counterparts, both age groups demonstrated similar gains to intelligibility of a novel accent following familiarization.…”

Detection and Recognition of Asynchronous Auditory/Visual Speech: Effects of Age, Hearing Loss, and Talker Accent

“…The effect of listener group did not interact with test time nor talker accent, indicating that both groups showed the same improvement with the second administration of the adaptive procedure. The rapid improvement in recognition of foreign-accented speech by younger and older listeners is consistent with previous findings (Gordon-Salant et al, 2010c;Bieber and Gordon-Salant, 2017) and is underscored here as a variable to control in future studies that employ multiple presentations of foreign-accented speech. Listener high-frequency pure-tone average accounted for the most variance in SNR scores across the two test administrations and for NE and NS speech.…”

Effects of Listener Age and Native Language Experience on Recognition of Accented and Unaccented English Words

“…Other important factors contributing to recognition of unaccented and accented English by older L1 listeners are their cognitive abilities and hearing sensitivity. Working memory capacity is a significant variable contributing to the difficulties of older listeners in understanding unaccented English (e.g., Akeroyd, 2008;Anderson, White-Schwoch, Parbery-Clark, & Kraus, 2013;Gordon-Salant & Cole, 2016;Schurman, Brungart, & Gordon-Salant, 2014) and accented speech (Bieber & Gordon-Salant, 2017;Janse & Adank, 2012), especially in noise. Other cognitive measures, such as processing speed and attention/inhibition, relate to perception of speech in difficult listening conditions, such as fast speech or in the presence of noise (Füllgrabe, Moore, & Stone, 2015;Gordon-Salant & Cole, 2016;Janse, 2009).…”