Quantification of Context Effects in Phoneme and Word Recognition by Non-Native Listeners Free

Non-native listeners have difficulty perceiving context cues in speech. The current study intended to quantify the gain in non-native listeners' perception of English speech due to context by adopting the Boothroyd and Nittrouer model [JASA, 84:101-114, 1988], in which context effects are expressed via factors j and k. These factors are mathematically equal to the total number of components in a speech stimulus with no context, but are reduced when context is present. Ten normal-hearing, non-native and ten native listeners participated in this study. To investigate the effect of acoustic-phonetic cues, 12 lists of CVC English words and 12 lists of nonsense words were employed. To investigate the effect of semantic-syntactic cues, three sets of 20 four-word sentences were employed. These sentences differed in the amount of semantic and syntactic cues contained in the stimuli. All stimuli were presented binaurally at 45 dB HL. A concomitant speech-weighted steady-state noise was added at 39 and 45 dB HL for words and sentences, respectively. Non-native listeners' verbal responses were recorded digitally. It was expected that j and k are larger in value in non-native than native listeners and that the magnitude of the difference is associated with non-native listeners' English learning history.