Recognition of foreign-accented vocoded speech by native English listeners
This study examined how talker accentedness affects the recognition of noise-vocoded speech by native English listeners and how contextual information interplays with talker accentedness during this process. The listeners included 20 native English-speaking, normal-hearing adults aged between 19 and...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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EDP Sciences
2023-01-01
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| Series: | Acta Acustica |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://acta-acustica.edpsciences.org/articles/aacus/full_html/2023/01/aacus230031/aacus230031.html |
| _version_ | 1797673800572076032 |
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| author | Yang Jing Barrett Jenna Yin Zhigang Xu Li |
| author_facet | Yang Jing Barrett Jenna Yin Zhigang Xu Li |
| author_sort | Yang Jing |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | This study examined how talker accentedness affects the recognition of noise-vocoded speech by native English listeners and how contextual information interplays with talker accentedness during this process. The listeners included 20 native English-speaking, normal-hearing adults aged between 19 and 23 years old. The stimuli were English Hearing in Noise Test (HINT) and Revised Speech Perception in Noise (R-SPIN) sentences produced by four native Mandarin talkers (two males and two females) who learned English as a second language. Two talkers (one in each sex) had a mild foreign accent and the other two had a moderate foreign accent. A six-channel noise vocoder was used to process the stimulus sentences. The vocoder-processed and unprocessed sentences were presented to the listeners. The results revealed that talkers’ foreign accents introduced additional detrimental effects besides spectral degradation and that the negative effect was exacerbated as the foreign accent became stronger. While the contextual information provided a beneficial role in recognizing mildly accented vocoded speech, the magnitude of contextual benefit decreased as the talkers’ accentedness increased. These findings revealed the joint influence of talker variability and sentence context on the perception of degraded speech. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-11T21:49:40Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-8d93a6f95ded42a9b20dbd54da9e2557 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2681-4617 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-11T21:49:40Z |
| publishDate | 2023-01-01 |
| publisher | EDP Sciences |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Acta Acustica |
| spelling | doaj.art-8d93a6f95ded42a9b20dbd54da9e25572023-09-26T09:03:18ZengEDP SciencesActa Acustica2681-46172023-01-0174310.1051/aacus/2023038aacus230031Recognition of foreign-accented vocoded speech by native English listenersYang Jing0https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6702-5104Barrett Jenna1https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3750-8161Yin Zhigang2Xu Li3https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0988-7934Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, MilwaukeeHearing, Speech and Language Sciences, Ohio UniversityPhonetics and Speech Science Lab, Institute of Linguistics, Chinese Academy of Social SciencesHearing, Speech and Language Sciences, Ohio UniversityThis study examined how talker accentedness affects the recognition of noise-vocoded speech by native English listeners and how contextual information interplays with talker accentedness during this process. The listeners included 20 native English-speaking, normal-hearing adults aged between 19 and 23 years old. The stimuli were English Hearing in Noise Test (HINT) and Revised Speech Perception in Noise (R-SPIN) sentences produced by four native Mandarin talkers (two males and two females) who learned English as a second language. Two talkers (one in each sex) had a mild foreign accent and the other two had a moderate foreign accent. A six-channel noise vocoder was used to process the stimulus sentences. The vocoder-processed and unprocessed sentences were presented to the listeners. The results revealed that talkers’ foreign accents introduced additional detrimental effects besides spectral degradation and that the negative effect was exacerbated as the foreign accent became stronger. While the contextual information provided a beneficial role in recognizing mildly accented vocoded speech, the magnitude of contextual benefit decreased as the talkers’ accentedness increased. These findings revealed the joint influence of talker variability and sentence context on the perception of degraded speech.https://acta-acustica.edpsciences.org/articles/aacus/full_html/2023/01/aacus230031/aacus230031.htmlforeign accentvocoded speechsentence recognitionsemantic cuesbehavioral measures |
| spellingShingle | Yang Jing Barrett Jenna Yin Zhigang Xu Li Recognition of foreign-accented vocoded speech by native English listeners Acta Acustica foreign accent vocoded speech sentence recognition semantic cues behavioral measures |
| title | Recognition of foreign-accented vocoded speech by native English listeners |
| title_full | Recognition of foreign-accented vocoded speech by native English listeners |
| title_fullStr | Recognition of foreign-accented vocoded speech by native English listeners |
| title_full_unstemmed | Recognition of foreign-accented vocoded speech by native English listeners |
| title_short | Recognition of foreign-accented vocoded speech by native English listeners |
| title_sort | recognition of foreign accented vocoded speech by native english listeners |
| topic | foreign accent vocoded speech sentence recognition semantic cues behavioral measures |
| url | https://acta-acustica.edpsciences.org/articles/aacus/full_html/2023/01/aacus230031/aacus230031.html |
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