title: Increase in speech recognition due to linguistic mismatch between target and masker speech: monolingual and simultaneous bilingual performance.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  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.
  
  
  METHODS
  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.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  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.
authors.forename: Lauren
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Calandruccio
authors.forename: Haibo
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Zhou
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008037:Linguistics; D008297:Male; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D019303:Multilingualism; D009622:Noise; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D010700:Phonetics; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D013060:Speech; D013067:Speech Perception; D055815:Young Adult