Does the Importance of Word-Initial and Word-Final Information Differ in Native versus Non-Native Spoken-Word Recognition?

Abstract

This paper investigates whether the importance and use of word-initial and word-final information in spoken-word recognition is dependent on whether one is listening in a native or a non-native language and on the presence of background noise. Native English and non-native Dutch and Finnish listeners participated in an English word recognition experiment, where either a word's onset or offset was masked by speech-shaped noise with different signal-to-noise ratios. The results showed that for all listener groups the masking of word onset information was more detrimental to spoken-word recognition than the masking of word offset information. The reliance on word-initial information was larger in harder listening conditions for the English but not so for the Dutch and Finnish listeners. Moreover, no significant differences in the use of word-initial and word-final information were found between the two non-native listener groups. Taken together, these results show that the reliance on word-initial information in deteriorating listening conditions seems to be dependent on whether one is listening in one's native or a non-native language rather than on the listener's native language. Index Terms: non-native spoken word recognition, listening in noise, language dependency.

The effect of background noise on the word activation process in nonnative spoken-word recognition.

“…The noise manipulation of the stimuli that was used in this study allows us to analyze the results in terms of the importance of word-initial and word-final information for native and nonnative spoken-word recognition in the presence of background noise. In line with previous studies (e.g., Allopenna et al, 1998; Coumans, van Hout, & Scharenborg, 2014; McQueen & Huettig, 2012; Scharenborg, Coumans, Kakouros, & van Hout, 2016; Slowiaczek et al, 1987; van der Vlugt & Nooteboom, 1987), word-initial information seems to be more important for successful word recognition than word-final information. The results showed that the masking of word-initial information was more detrimental to spoken-word recognition than the masking of word-final information, leading to lower word recognition accuracies and higher numbers of different erroneous answers.…”

Why listening in background noise is harder in a non-native language than in a native language: A review

“…In multilingual countries or countries where the general population has a high level of proficiency in a particular non-native language, the general (student) population can participate in studies investigating word recognition in that non-native language. This allows for groups of participants with a homogeneous background (Brouwer et al, 2012;Cooke et al, 2008;Coumans et al, 2014;Ezzatian et al, 2010;Golestani et al, 2009;Jin & Liu, 2012;Scharenborg et al, 2016aScharenborg et al, , 2018aShimizu et al, 2001;Van Engen, 2010;Van Wijngaarden et al, 2002;Zhang et al, 2014). Also studies that specifically investigated early bilinguals tended to have a group of participants with homogeneous language backgrounds (Ezzatian et al, 2010;Mayo et al, 1997;Meador et al, 2000, Rogers et al, 2006.…”

“…Alternatively, the influence of contextual information needs to be minimised. This can be done by using isolated words (Coumans, van Hout, & Scharenborg, 2014;Golestani et al, 2009;Kaandorp, De Groot, Festen, Smits, & Overts, 2015;Scharenborg, Coumans, Kakouros, & Van Hout, 2016a;Scharenborg et al, 2018a;Takayanagi, Dirks, & Moshfegh, 2002), by presenting words in a fixed carrier phrase (Rogers et al, 2006;Shimizu et al, 2001;Warzybok et al, 2015), by using sentences that are grammatically correct but semantically meaningless (Ezzatian et al, 2010) or using a keyword spotting task in which sentences contain only a limited number of common words (Bradlow & Alexander, 2007;Cooke et al, 2008;Meador, Flege, & MacKay, 2000). For example, Golestani et al (2009) used isolated words in a priming paradigm, as this allowed them to separate the semantic level of speech from the syntactic and pragmatic levels present in sentences.…”

“…For example, Golestani et al (2009) used isolated words in a priming paradigm, as this allowed them to separate the semantic level of speech from the syntactic and pragmatic levels present in sentences. Scharenborg et al (2016aScharenborg et al ( , 2018a specifically investigated whether word-initial or word-final information was more important in word recognition, and thus used isolated words where either the word's onset or offset was masked by noise.…”

“…A number of studies used objective measures to assess participants' proficiency in the nonnative language. These objective measures include standardized tests such as TOEFL (Bradlow & Alexander, 2007;Bradlow & Bent, 2002;Jin & Liu, 2012;Van Engen, 2010), Cambridge Advanced Examination (Cooke et al, 2008), the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR, Verhelst et al, 2009;Kaandorp et al, 2016;Warzybok et al, 2015), the Mill Hill vocabulary score (Ezzatian et al, 2010), and the Lexical Test for Advanced Learners of English (LexTALE, Lemhöfer & Broersma, 2012;Coumans et al, 2014;Scharenborg et al, 2016aScharenborg et al, ,b, 2018a. However, other studies used subjective measures such as self-ratings of proficiency (Takayanagi et al, 2012;Van Wijngaarden et al, 2002), reported age of onset and length of residence (Meador et al, 2000), or length of formal education in the non-native language (Brouwer et al, 2012;Golestani et al, 2009;Shimizu et al, 2001).…”