Effects of speaker variability and noise on Mandarin fricative identification by native and non-native listeners.
Speaker variability and noise are two common sources of acoustic variability. The goal of this study was to examine whether these two sources of acoustic variability affected native and non-native perception of Mandarin fricatives to different degrees. Multispeaker Mandarin fricative stimuli were presented to 40 native and 52 non-native listeners in two presentation formats (blocked by speaker and mixed across speakers). The stimuli were also mixed with speech-shaped noise to create five levels of signal-to- noise ratios. The results showed that noise affected non-native identification disproportionately. By contrast, the effect of speaker variability was comparable between the native and non-native listeners. Confusion patterns were interpreted with reference to the results of acoustic analysis, suggesting native and non-native listeners used distinct acoustic cues for fricative identification. It was concluded that not all sources of acoustic variability are treated equally by native and non-native listeners. Whereas noise compromised non-native fricative perception disproportionately, speaker variability did not pose a special challenge to the non-native listeners.
Division of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio 45701, USA. leec1@ohio.edu
Chao-Yang
CY
Lee
Yu
Y
Zhang
Ximing
X
Li
Liang
L
Tao
Z S
ZS
Bond
D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001301:Audiometry, Pure-Tone; D001302:Audiometry, Speech; D001309:Auditory Threshold; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D009622:Noise / Q000009:adverse effects*; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D010700:Phonetics; D011930:Reaction Time; D017603:Signal Detection, Psychological; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013067:Speech Perception; D013997:Time Factors; D014833:Voice Quality; D055815:Young Adult