title: The influence of visual speech information on the intelligibility of English consonants produced by non-native speakers.
abstract: This study examines how visual speech information affects native judgments of the intelligibility of speech sounds produced by non-native (L2) speakers. Native Canadian English perceivers as judges perceived three English phonemic contrasts (/b-v, θ-s, l-ɹ/) produced by native Japanese speakers as well as native Canadian English speakers as controls. These stimuli were presented under audio-visual (AV, with speaker voice and face), audio-only (AO), and visual-only (VO) conditions. The results showed that, across conditions, the overall intelligibility of Japanese productions of the native (Japanese)-like phonemes (/b, s, l/) was significantly higher than the non-Japanese phonemes (/v, θ, ɹ/). In terms of visual effects, the more visually salient non-Japanese phonemes /v, θ/ were perceived as significantly more intelligible when presented in the AV compared to the AO condition, indicating enhanced intelligibility when visual speech information is available. However, the non-Japanese phoneme /ɹ/ was perceived as less intelligible in the AV compared to the AO condition. Further analysis revealed that, unlike the native English productions, the Japanese speakers produced /ɹ/ without visible lip-rounding, indicating that non-native speakers' incorrect articulatory configurations may decrease the degree of intelligibility. These results suggest that visual speech information may either positively or negatively affect L2 speech intelligibility.
authors.affiliation: MARCS Institute, University of Western Sydney, Locked Bag 1797, Penrith, New South Wales, 2751, Australia.
authors.forename: Saya
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kawase
authors.affiliation: Department of Linguistics, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, British Columbia, V5A 1S6, Canada.
authors.forename: Beverly
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Hannah
authors.affiliation: Department of Linguistics, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, British Columbia, V5A 1S6, Canada.
authors.forename: Yue
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Wang
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D001302:Audiometry, Speech; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D008297:Male; D010700:Phonetics; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013065:Speech Intelligibility; D013067:Speech Perception; D013068:Speech Production Measurement; D014796:Visual Perception; D014833:Voice Quality