Increase in speech recognition due to linguistic mismatch between target and masker speech: monolingual and simultaneous bilingual performance.

TitleIncrease in speech recognition due to linguistic mismatch between target and masker speech: monolingual and simultaneous bilingual performance.
Publication TypeJournal Article
Year of Publication2014
AuthorsCalandruccio, Lauren, and Haibo Zhou
JournalJ Speech Lang Hear Res
Volume57
Issue3
Pagination1089-97
Date Published2014 Jun 01
ISSN1558-9102
KeywordsAcoustic Stimulation, Adult, Female, Humans, Language, Linguistics, Male, Models, Theoretical, Multilingualism, Noise, Perceptual Masking, Phonetics, Recognition, Psychology, Speech, Speech Perception, Young Adult
Abstract

PURPOSE: To examine whether improved speech recognition during linguistically mismatched target-masker experiments is due to linguistic unfamiliarity of the masker speech or linguistic dissimilarity between the target and masker speech.METHOD: Monolingual English speakers (n = 20) and English-Greek simultaneous bilinguals (n = 20) listened to English sentences in the presence of competing English and Greek speech. Data were analyzed using mixed-effects regression models to determine differences in English recogition performance between the 2 groups and 2 masker conditions.RESULTS: Results indicated that English sentence recognition for monolinguals and simultaneous English-Greek bilinguals improved when the masker speech changed from competing English to competing Greek speech.CONCLUSION: The improvement in speech recognition that has been observed for linguistically mismatched target-masker experiments cannot be simply explained by the masker language being linguistically unknown or unfamiliar to the listeners. Listeners can improve their speech recognition in linguistically mismatched target-masker experiments even when the listener is able to obtain meaningful linguistic information from the masker speech.

DOI10.1044/2013_JSLHR-H-12-0378
Alternate JournalJ Speech Lang Hear Res
Original PublicationIncrease in speech recognition due to linguistic mismatch between target and masker speech: monolingual and simultaneous bilingual performance.
PubMed ID24167230
PubMed Central IDPMC4043956
Grant ListR01ES021900 / ES / NIEHS NIH HHS / United States
P01CA142538 / CA / NCI NIH HHS / United States
P01 CA142538 / CA / NCI NIH HHS / United States
R01 ES021900 / ES / NIEHS NIH HHS / United States
UL1RR025747 / RR / NCRR NIH HHS / United States
UL1 RR025747 / RR / NCRR NIH HHS / United States
Project: