title: Effects of noise, reverberation and foreign accent on native and non-native listeners' performance of English speech comprehension.
abstract: A large number of non-native English speakers may be found in American classrooms, both as listeners and talkers. Little is known about how this population comprehends speech in realistic adverse acoustical conditions. A study was conducted to investigate the effects of background noise level (BNL), reverberation time (RT), and talker foreign accent on native and non-native listeners' speech comprehension, while controlling for English language abilities. A total of 115 adult listeners completed comprehension tasks under 15 acoustic conditions: three BNLs (RC-30, RC-40, and RC-50) and five RTs (from 0.4 to 1.2 s). Fifty-six listeners were tested with speech from native English-speaking talkers and 59 with native Mandarin-Chinese-speaking talkers. Results show that, while higher BNLs were generally more detrimental to listeners with lower English proficiency, all listeners experienced significant comprehension deficits above RC-40 with native English talkers. This limit was lower (i.e., above RC-30), however, with Chinese talkers. For reverberation, non-native listeners as a group performed best with RT up to 0.6 s, while native listeners performed equally well up to 1.2 s. A matched foreign accent benefit has also been identified, where the negative impact of higher reverberation does not exist for non-native listeners who share the talker's native language.
authors.affiliation: Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 1110 South 67th Street, Omaha, Nebraska 68182-0681, USA.
authors.forename: Z Ellen
authors.initials: ZE
authors.lastname: Peng
authors.affiliation: Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 1110 South 67th Street, Omaha, Nebraska 68182-0681, USA.
authors.forename: Lily M
authors.initials: LM
authors.lastname: Wang
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D001302:Audiometry, Speech; D032882:Comprehension; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D019303:Multilingualism; D009622:Noise / Q000009:adverse effects*; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D010700:Phonetics; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013065:Speech Intelligibility; D013067:Speech Perception; D014732:Vibration; D014833:Voice Quality; D055815:Young Adult