Individual differences in the perception of regional, nonnative, and disordered speech varieties

Abstract

Speech perception abilities vary substantially across listeners, particularly in adverse conditions including those stemming from environmental degradation (e.g., noise) or from talker-related challenges (e.g., nonnative or disordered speech). This study examined adult listeners' recognition of words in phrases produced by six talkers representing three speech varieties: a nonnative accent (Spanish-accented English), a regional dialect (Irish English), and a disordered variety (ataxic dysarthria). Semantically anomalous phrases from these talkers were presented in a transcription task and intelligibility scores, percent words correct, were compared across the three speech varieties. Three cognitive-linguistic areas-receptive vocabulary, cognitive flexibility, and inhibitory control of attention-were assessed as possible predictors of individual word recognition performance. Intelligibility scores for the Spanish accent were significantly correlated with scores for the Irish English and ataxic dysarthria. Scores for the Irish English and dysarthric speech, in contrast, were not correlated. Furthermore, receptive vocabulary was the only cognitive-linguistic assessment that significantly predicted intelligibility scores. These results suggest that, rather than a global skill of perceiving speech that deviates from native dialect norms, listeners may possess specific abilities to overcome particular types of acoustic-phonetic deviation. Furthermore, vocabulary size offers performance benefits for intelligibility of speech that deviates from one's typical dialect norms.

Coping with adversity: Individual differences in the perception of noisy and accented speech

“…Previous research indicated that listeners use additional cognitive, linguistic, and/or perceptual resources for speech perception under adverse conditions (Heinrich, Schneider, & Craik, 2008;Pichora-Fuller, Schneider, & Daneman, 1995;Rabbitt, 1968), and that individuals vary substantially in their ability to perceive speech in adverse listening conditions (e.g., Benichov et al, 2012;Bent et al, 2016;Wightman et al, 2010). Skills such as auditory working memory, receptive vocabulary, inhibition, and rhythm perception have been investigated as indicators of aptitude in the perception of environmentally degraded or accented speech.…”

“…Receptive vocabulary Behavioral studies examining multiple types of challenging listening conditions have found relationships between receptive vocabulary and the intelligibility of disordered speech as well as of speech with unfamiliar accents (Banks, Gowen, Munro, & Adank, 2015;Bent et al, 2016;Janse & Adank, 2012). For example, Janse and Adank investigated listeners' perceptual adaptation to a novel constructed accent in both auditory-only and audiovisual presentations, and compared adaptation with the listeners' cognitive abilities.…”

“…These adverse conditions may vary in their origin, but the effects for listeners are often similar: They may not understand individual words or entire utterances, and/or they may need more time than usual to accurately decode what was heard (Van Engen & Peelle, 2014). Previous research has suggested that there are vast individual differences in listeners' abilities to understand speech under adverse listening conditions (e.g., Benichov, Cox, Tun, & Wingfield, 2012;Bent, Baese-Berk, Borrie, & McKee, 2016;Wightman, Kistler, & O'Bryan, 2010). In the present study, we first compared individuals' performance in multiple types of adverse listening conditions, to determine whether listening ability in one condition was related to listening ability in all, or only in specific, other types of adverse listening conditions.…”

Vocabulary Knowledge Predicts Lexical Processing: Evidence from a Group of Participants with Diverse Educational Backgrounds

“…In young adults, an increase in vocabulary size was associated with better listening comprehension (Andringa et al, 2012). Large vocabulary size was also found to be linked to better speech recognition in suboptimal conditions (Bent et al, 2016). Furthermore, Yap et al (2012) found higher vocabulary scores to be associated with more accurate and faster word recognition in lexical decision and speeded pronunciation tasks.…”

Perceptual Consequences of Variability in Native and Non-Native Speech

“…That is, while the exact structure of non-native speech may provide some unique challenges, it is not the case that we should claim that nonnative speech is perceived in an entirely different way than native speech. In fact, in a growing body of work, researchers have demonstrated that there are substantial similarities in the types of cognitive skills that underlie the perception of different types of unfamiliar speech (e.g., dysarthric speech, an unfamiliar native accent, and non-native speech; Bent, Baese-Berk, Borrie, & McKee, 2016;McLaughlin, BaeseBerk, Bent, Borrie, & Van Engen, 2018). These results suggest that rather than treating non-native speech as a special case of speech perception that does not need to be accounted for by general models of speech perception, it instead provides a unique and convenient tool for better defining our models and theories of speech perception.…”