Proficiency, Use of Context and Non-Native Speech Perception in Noise Performance

Purpose: The present study evaluated a novel method of quantifying relative use of bottom-up and top-down processing when perceiving speech in challenging listening conditions. Methods: One-hundred seven normal-hearing adults participated as listeners. Fortyseven were Spanish-speaking, second-language learners of English (L2) and 60 were monolingual speakers of English. Using adaptive procedure, signal-to-noise ratios required for 70%-correct recognition of words and sentences (SNR70) were obtained for all listeners. Individual listeners were statistically classified as “native-like” or “non-native” based on the sentence and word SNR70. Results: Despite their native-like performance in quiet, only half of the L2 listeners’ SNR70 values were “native-like”, whereas the remaining half L2 listeners required more favorable SNR70. Interestingly, although there was no notable difference in language background among the “nonnative”L2 listeners, half of them required more favorable SNR70 for sentences than for words, suggesting inability to use sentence context as effectively as the remaining “non-native” or “native-like” L2 listeners. Conclusion: The results show that the present method may be useful in identifying the shortcomings in listening strategies individual second-language learners use. Such information can possibly serve as a guide to choose exercises and/or training to alleviate difficulty they experience in challenging listening conditions, which may be possibly applicable to other listener populations.