title: Cross-language differences in informational masking of speech by speech: English versus Mandarin Chinese.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The purpose of the study was to determine why perceived spatial separation provides a greater release from informational masking in Chinese than English when target sentences in each of the languages are masked by other talkers speaking the same language.
  
  
  METHODS
  Monolingual speakers of English and Mandarin Chinese listened to semantically anomalous sentences in their own language when 1 of 3 maskers was present (speech-spectrum noise, a 2-talker speech masker in the same language, and a 2-talker speech masker in the other language).
  
  
  RESULTS
  Both groups benefitted equally from spatial separation when the maskers were speech-spectrum noise or cross-language. Chinese listeners benefitted less from spatial separation than did English listeners when a same-language masker was used. Performance was scored in terms of the number of target words correctly identified; because Chinese target words were composed of 2 "stand-alone" morphemes, the authors also scored Chinese target words as correct when either of the morphemes was correctly identified. When this was done, Chinese and English listeners benefitted equally from spatial separation in all conditions.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  These results support a model in which release from informational masking in both monolingual English and Chinese listeners occurs because spatial separation facilitates morpheme access in both languages.
authors.affiliation: National Key Laboratory on Machine Perception, Speech and Hearing Research Centre, Peking University, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Xihong
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.forename: Zhigang
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.forename: Ying
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.forename: Jing
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Liang
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Meredyth
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Daneman
authors.forename: Bruce A
authors.initials: BA
authors.lastname: Schneider
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001309:Auditory Threshold / Q000502:physiology; D002170:Canada; D002681:China; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term / Q000502:physiology*; D008959:Models, Neurological; D009622:Noise; D010470:Perceptual Masking / Q000502:physiology*; D010700:Phonetics; D011571:Psychoacoustics; D013017:Sound Localization / Q000502:physiology; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult