title: Acoustic-Phonetic Versus Lexical Processing in Nonnative Listeners Differing in Their Dominant Language.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Nonnative listeners have difficulty recognizing English words due to underdeveloped acoustic-phonetic and/or lexical skills. The present study used Boothroyd and Nittrouer's (1988)j factor to tease apart these two components of word recognition.
  
  
  METHODS
  Participants included 15 native English and 29 native Russian listeners. Fourteen and 15 of the Russian listeners reported English (ED) and Russian (RD) to be their dominant language, respectively. Listeners were presented 119 consonant-vowel-consonant real and nonsense words in speech-spectrum noise at +6 dB SNR. Responses were scored for word and phoneme recognition, the logarithmic quotient of which yielded j.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Word and phoneme recognition was comparable between native and ED listeners but poorer in RD listeners. Analysis of j indicated less effective use of lexical information in RD than in native and ED listeners. Lexical processing was strongly correlated with the length of residence in the United States.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Language background is important for nonnative word recognition. Lexical skills can be regarded as nativelike in ED nonnative listeners. Compromised word recognition in ED listeners is unlikely a result of poor lexical processing. Performance should be interpreted with caution for listeners dominant in their first language, whose word recognition is affected by both lexical and acoustic-phonetic factors.
authors.affiliation: Long Island University, Brooklyn, NY.
authors.forename: Lu-Feng
authors.initials: LF
authors.lastname: Shi
authors.affiliation: Long Island University, Brooklyn, NYHaskins Laboratories, New Haven, CT.
authors.forename: Laura L
authors.initials: LL
authors.lastname: Koenig
mesh_terms: D000162:Acoustics; D000328:Adult; D001307:Auditory Perception; D003071:Cognition; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D019303:Multilingualism; D010700:Phonetics; D059629:Signal-To-Noise Ratio; D013067:Speech Perception; D055815:Young Adult