Effects of bilingualism, noise, and reverberation on speech perception by listeners with normal hearing

Rogers, Catherine L.; Lister, Jennifer J.; Febo, Dashielle M.; Besing, Joan; Abrams, Harvey B.

doi:10.1017/s014271640606036x

Cited by 235 publications

(259 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…Previous research has shown that bilinguals may perform speech recognition tasks as equally well as their monolingual peers in quiet; degraded listening conditions, such as noise or reverberation, however, have been found to more adversely affect speech recognition performance in bilinguals than monolinguals despite normal auditory thresholds [31][32][33][34]. The current finding that monolinguals overall outperform bilinguals in the absence of noise has not been as widely reported in the literature.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 65%

Effects of Stress, Stop Release, and Familiarization on Speech Recognition Thresholds

Eggebraaten¹,

Bae²

2017

J Phonet and Audiol

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Objective: This study examined outcomes of common procedural variations of speech recognition threshold (SRT) testing, specifically related to the effects of equal syllable stress, word-final stop consonant release, and priorfamiliarization, with the participants' language status taken into account.Methods: SRTs were obtained from 40 adults with normal hearing. Twenty participants received priorfamiliarization with the spondee list and the other 20 received no prior-familiarization. Repeated SRT tests were administered using three different recordings which varied in syllable stress and word-final stop release patterns. Results:The group with prior-familiarization demonstrated a threshold that was significantly lower than the group without prior-familiarization, by approximately 5 dB HL. Despite the statistically significant effects of equal syllable stress and word-final stop release on SRTs, the magnitude of SRT changes elicited by these acoustic-phonetic variations was only slightly above 1 dB HL. The monolinguals generally outperformed the bilinguals in SRT outcomes with the threshold difference less than 3 dB HL. Conclusion:Findings from the present study suggest that familiarizing listeners with test vocabulary prior to SRT administration should continue to remain an important procedural requirement. Future research addressing the extent to which acoustic-phonetic variations of spondee production affect SRTs in individuals with hearing impairments is warranted.

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 65%

Effects of Stress, Stop Release, and Familiarization on Speech Recognition Thresholds

Eggebraaten¹,

Bae²

2017

J Phonet and Audiol

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“…The ILR Listening Skill Research into the influence of different types of noise on listening comprehension has typically presented speech in white noise, pink noise, and/or babble noise 24 Studies also have investigated the influence of audio distortion; these have focused on manipulations like reverberation (Nábělek & Donahue, 1984;Rogers, Lister, Febo, Besing, & Abrams, 2006), low-pass filtering (Aydelott et al, 2006), and time compression (Aydelott & Bates, 2004). Nábělek and Donahue (1984) found that nonnative listeners identified rhyming words 10% less accurately than native listeners when they were presented with 0.8 and 1.2 second reverberation times, while Rogers et al (2006) observed that even Spanish-English bilinguals who had learned English prior to 6 years of age and spoke English without a noticeable foreign accent had significantly poorer word recognition scores than monolingual listeners for words in noise with reverberation. These results indicate that even very skilled non-native listeners may have difficulty understanding speech in the presence of reverberation.…”

Section: Distortion and Noisementioning

confidence: 99%

What makes listening difficult? Factors affecting second language listening comprehension

Bloomfield¹,

Wayland²,

Rhoades³

et al. 2010

110

120

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Factors affecting second language listening comprehension gies-that is, those who are aware of and use effective strategies, such as avoiding mental translation-demonstrate better L2 listening comprehension. 2 In addition to these general cognitive abilities, a number of factors pertaining to experience with the L2 influence listening skill. These factors include the amount of prior exposure to the language; familiarity with and an ability to understand the non-native language's phonology; vocabulary size; and background knowledge about the topic, text, structure, schema, and culture.Familiarity with the L2 changes the extent to which the L2 listener uses top-down or bottom-up strategies in listening. For example, expert listeners use both types of strategies: They are able to accurately make sense of the speech signal (bottom-up information) 3 and integrate this information with PurPose-To establish what is currently known about factors that affect foreign language listening comprehension, with a focus on characteristics of the listener, passage, and testing conditions.ConClusions-Research on second language (L2) listening comprehension strongly supports the importance of a number of factors, for example, a listener's working memory capacity and the number of ideas in a passage. Much of the research, however, reports weak or inconclusive results, leaving many factors and complex interactions among factors unresolved and in need of further investigation.relevanCe-Identifying the factors that affect L2 listening comprehension will help Defense Language Institute Proficiency Test (DLPT) designers anticipate how qualities of selected authentic materials will impact listening comprehension. Executive Summary PurPoseThe U.S. Government administers the Defense Language Proficiency Test (DLPT) to military linguists and other government personnel to assess their listening and reading comprehension in a number of foreign languages, including critical languages such as Mandarin, Modern Standard Arabic, Egyptian Arabic, and Persian Farsi. The DLPT is updated every 10 to 15 years, and the most recent transition-from DLPT IV to DLPT5-included a greater emphasis on testing listening comprehension with authentic materials. In turn, this has led to a growing interest in the factors that make second language (L2) listening difficult.To examine these factors, CASL reviewed the current scientific literature and summarized the characteristics of listeners, passages, and testing conditions. The review targeted features of particular interest to stakeholders at the Defense Language Institute (DLI). The long-term goal of the project is to support the selection of authentic listening materials that accurately reflect different proficiency levels. ConClusionsAlthough the available research on L2 listening comprehension is limited, CASL's literature review identified several factors that affect listening comprehension. These factors are summarized below and in Tables 1, 2, and 3. 1 Characteristics of the listenerUnderstanding a fo...

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“…In another study, Rogers, Lister, Febo, Besing, and Abrams (2006) focused on the listening comprehension of native and bilingual speakers. They compared the word recognition of native speakers and Spanish-English bilinguals in quiet and noisy situations, and in noisy situations with reverberation conditions.…”

Section: Background Noisementioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of Speech Rate and Background Noise on EFL Learners’ Listening Comprehension of Different Types of Materials

Fujita¹

2017

The Journal of AsiaTEFL

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The present study examined the effects of speech rate and background noise on EFL learners' listening comprehension of film and textbook materials. The participants listened to eight different types of dialogues with different conditions in the speech rate, the background noise, and the types of learning materials, and their listening comprehensibility was measured. For the speech rate factor, either a fast or a slow speech rate was used. The background noise effect was executed by adding crowd talking noise to the dialogue. The script was adapted from either textbook materials or film materials. The results showed that each factor had an influence on learners' listening comprehension. Though the readability, word levels, and the number of words were at the same level, the scores when textbook materials were used were significantly higher than that of the film materials. Regarding the textbook materials, they had higher scores with the slow speech than the fast speech, and also the scores in the silent condition were higher than that of the noise condition. The students' listening comprehension score was the lowest where there was background noise and a fast speech rate.Keywords: listening, authenticity, speech rate, background noise, material type IntroductionIn the language education field, various types of materials have been used for listening instruction. Among others, films have been used for a variety of purposes, such as motivational improvement, intercultural communication, and grammar instruction (Akimoto & Hamada, 2007;Hammer & Swaffar, 2012;Johnson, 2008).Although both learners and instructors recognize the advantages of films as teaching materials, studies related to the use of cinematic materials in language teaching are scarce. Most studies on the use of films are concerned exclusively with student motivation or merely report how films have been used in lessons (Hirano & Matsumoto, 2011;Johnson, 2008;Shea, 1995). Consequently, little is known about the effects of films on learners' listening comprehension abilities. Some studies have examined speech rates and the use of collocations in films (Furuchi, 2011;Nitta, Okazaki, & Klinger, 2010a). In addition, a few studies have been conducted on the linguistic characteristics of film materials. Nevertheless, there is much work to be done in this area, including the need to examine the most challenging factors for learners in regard to the comprehension of films.Fast speech rate and presence of background noise are distinctive linguistic features that make comprehension of films difficult for English language learners. Fujita (2014) conducted a longitudinal study examining the effects of using films as teaching materials on learners' listening comprehension. Fujita's study found that fast speech rate and presence of background noise prevent learners from optimal Ryoko FujitaThe Journal of Asia TEFL Vol. 14, No. 4, Winter 2017, 638-653 639 comprehension. Porter and Roberts (1981) also point out that fast speech rate and background noise are factors tha...

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Effects of bilingualism, noise, and reverberation on speech perception by listeners with normal hearing

Cited by 235 publications

References 39 publications

Effects of Stress, Stop Release, and Familiarization on Speech Recognition Thresholds

Effects of Stress, Stop Release, and Familiarization on Speech Recognition Thresholds

What makes listening difficult? Factors affecting second language listening comprehension

Effects of Speech Rate and Background Noise on EFL Learners’ Listening Comprehension of Different Types of Materials

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