Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T23:09:06.077Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The effects of dialect variation on speech intelligibility in a multitalker background

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 January 2014

EWA JACEWICZ  and
ROBERT ALLEN FOX
EWA JACEWICZ*
Affiliation:
Ohio State University
ROBERT ALLEN FOX
Affiliation:
Ohio State University
*
ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE Ewa Jacewicz, Department of Speech and Hearing Science, Ohio State University, 1070 Carmack Road, Columbus, OH 43210. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Speech intelligibility in a multitalker background can be affected by the language of both the talker and the interfering speech. This study investigated whether this interaction is modulated by dialect variations of the same language. American English listeners were presented with target sentences in either their own General American English (GAE) or a different accent (Southern American English [SAE]) masked by either GAE or SAE two-talker babble at three sound to noise ratios (SNRs): +3, 0, and –3 dB. All speech materials were produced by male talkers. Across all conditions, SAE target was more intelligible than GAE. Intelligibility of either target decreased as the level of the interfering babble noise increased. Target accent interacted with masking accent: at +3 dB SNR, GAE (and not SAE) was the more effective masker. The target-masker interaction was different as listening conditions deteriorated: at 0 and –3 dB SNR, masking accent did not affect GAE target, but when the target was SAE, the SAE masker (and not GAE) was more effective. Thus, at increased noise levels, listeners benefited from the mismatch between the target and masking accents only when the target was in a nonnative accent. These results demonstrate that dialect variation can influence listeners’ performance in a multitalker environment. The apparent asymmetry in intelligibility of accents may be in part related to dialect-specific prosodic and phonetic features.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 36 , Issue 3 , May 2015 , pp. 729 - 746
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Adank, P., Evans, B. G., Stuart-Smith, J., & Scott, S. K. (2009). Comprehension of familiar and unfamiliar native accents under adverse listening conditions. Journal of Experimental Psychology Human Performance and Perception, 35, 520–529.Google Scholar
Bench, J., Kowal, A., & Bamford, J. (1979). The BKB (Bamford-Kowal-Bench) sentence lists for partially-hearing children. British Journal of Audiology, 13, 108–112.Google Scholar
Bronkhorst, A. W. (2000). The cocktail party phenomenon: A review of research on speech intelligibility in multiple-talker conditions. Acustica united with Acta Acustica, 86, 117–128.Google Scholar
Bronkhorst, A. W., & Plomp, R. (1992). Effect of multiple speechlike maskers on binaural speech recognition in normal and impaired hearing. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 92, 3132–3138.Google Scholar
Brungart, D. S. (2001). Informational and energetic masking effects in the perception of two simultaneous talkers. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 109, 1101–1109.Google Scholar
Brungart, D. S., Chang, P. S., Simpson, B. D., & Wang, D. L. (2009). Multitalker speech perception with ideal time-frequency segregation: Effects of voice characteristics and number of talkers. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 125, 4006–4022.Google Scholar
Brungart, D. S., Simpson, B. D., Ericson, M. A., & Scott, K. R. (2001). Informational and energetic masking effects in the perception of multiple simultaneous talkers. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 110, 2527–2538.Google Scholar
Calandruccio, L., Dhar, S., & Bradlow, A. R. (2010). Speech-on-speech masking with variable access to the linguistic content of the masker speech. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 128, 860–869.Google Scholar
Clopper, C. G., & Bradlow, A. (2008). Perception of dialect variation in noise: Intelligibility and classification. Language and Speech, 51, 175–198.Google Scholar
Clopper, C. G., & Pisoni, D. B. (2004). Some acoustic cues for the perceptual categorization of American English regional dialects. Journal of Phonetics, 32, 111–140.Google Scholar
Clopper, C. G., & Pisoni, D. B. (2007). Free classification of regional dialects of American English. Journal of Phonetics, 35, 421–438.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Clopper, C. G., & Smiljanic, R. B. (2011). Effects of gender and regional dialect on prosodic patterns in American English. Journal of Phonetics, 39, 237–245.Google Scholar
Clopper, C. G., Levi, S., & Pisoni, D. (2006). Perceptual similarity of regional dialects of American English. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 119, 566–574.Google Scholar
Cooke, M., Garcia Lecumberri, M. L., & Barker, J. (2008). The foreign language cocktail party problem: Energetic and informational masking effects in non-native speech perception. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 123, 414–427.Google Scholar
Cutler, A., Smits, R., & Cooper, N. (2005). Vowel perception: Effects of non-native language vs. non-native dialect. Speech Communication, 47, 32–42.Google Scholar
Floccia, C., Goslin, J., Girard, F., & Konopczynski, G. (2006). Does a regional accent perturb speech processing? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Performance and Perception, 32, 1276–1293.Google Scholar
Fox, R. A., & Jacewicz, E. (2009). Cross-dialectal variation in formant dynamics of American English vowels. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 125, 2603–2618.Google Scholar
Fox, R. A., Jacewicz, E., & Hart, J. (2013). Pitch pattern variations in three regional varieties of American English. Paper presented at the 14th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (Interspeech 2013), Lyon, France.Google Scholar
Freyman, R. L., Balakrishnan, U., & Helfer, K. S. (2001). Spatial release from informational masking in speech recognition. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 109, 2112–2122.Google Scholar
Garcia Lecumberri, M. L., & Cooke, M. (2006). Effect of masker type on native and non-native consonant perception in noise. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 119, 2445–2454.Google Scholar
Garcia Lecumberri, M. L., Cooke, M., and Cutler, A. (2010). Non-native speech perception in adverse conditions: A review. Speech Communication, 52, 864–886.Google Scholar
Gooskens, C., van Heuven, V. J., van Bezooijen, R., & Pacilly, J. J. A. (2010). Is spoken Danish less intelligible than Swedish? Speech Communication, 52, 1022–1037.Google Scholar
Gordon-Salant, S., Yeni-Komshian, G. H., & Fitzgibbons, P. J. (2010). Recognition of accented English in quiet and noise by younger and older listeners. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 128, 3152–3160.Google Scholar
Hart, J. (2013). Prosodic differences among dialects of American English. (Senior honors thesis, Ohio State University, 2013).Google Scholar
Jacewicz, E., Fox, R. A., & Salmons, J. (2007). Vowel duration in three American English dialects. American Speech, 82, 367–385.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jacewicz, E., Fox, R. A., & Salmons, J. (2011). Cross-generational vowel change in American English. Language Variation and Change, 23, 45–86.Google Scholar
Jacewicz, E., Fox, R. A., & Wei, L. (2010). Between-speaker and within-speaker variation in speech tempo of American English. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 128, 839–850.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Labov, W., Ash, S., & Boberg, C. (2006). The Midland. In Atlas of North American English (pp. 263–278). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Mayo, L. H., Florentine, M., & Buus, S. (1997). Age of second-language acquisition and perception of speech in noise. Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research, 40, 686–693.Google Scholar
Meador, D., Flege, J. E., & Mackay, I. R. A. (2000). Factors affecting the recognition of words in a second language. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 3, 55–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, G. (1947). Sensitivity to changes in the intensity of white Gaussian noise and its relation to masking and loudness. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 191, 609–619.Google Scholar
Pinet, M., Iverson, P., & Huckvale, M. (2011). Second-language experience and speech-in-noise recognition: Effects of talker-listener accent similarity. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 130, 1656–1662.Google Scholar
Pisoni, D., Nusbaum, H., & Greene, B. (1985). Perception of synthetic speech generated by rule. Proceedings of the IEEE, 73, 1665–1676.Google Scholar
Rhebergen, K. S., & Versfeld, N. J. (2005). A Speech Intelligibility Index-based approach to predict the speech reception threshold for sentences in fluctuating noise for normal-hearing listeners. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 114, 2181–2192.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rhebergen, K. S., Versfeld, N. J., & Dreschler, W. A. (2005). Release from informational masking by time reversal of native and non-native interfering speech. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 118, 1274–1277.Google Scholar
Rogers, C. L., Dalby, J., & Nishi, K. (2004). Effects of noise and proficiency on intelligibility of Chinese-accented English. Language and Speech, 47, 139–154.Google Scholar
Scott, D. R., & Cutler, A. (1984). Segmental phonology and the perception of syntactic structure. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 23, 450–466.Google Scholar
Simpson, S. A., & Cooke, M. (2005). Consonant identification in N-talker babble is a nonmonotonic function of N. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 118, 2775–2778.Google Scholar
Sledd, J. (1966). Breaking, umlaut, and the southern drawl. Language, 42, 18–41.Google Scholar
Studebaker, G. (1985). A “rationalized” arcsine transform. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 28, 455–462.Google Scholar
Sumner, M., & Samuel, A. G. (2009). The effect of experience on the perception and representation of dialect variants. Journal of Memory and Language, 60, 487–501.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tuinman, A., Mitterer, H., & Cutler, A. (2011). Perception of intrusive /r/ in English by native, cross-language and cross-dialect listeners. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 130, 1643–1652.Google Scholar
Van Engen, K. J. (2010). Similarity and familiarity: Second language sentence recognition in first- and second-language multi-talker babble. Speech Communication, 52, 943–953.Google Scholar
Van Engen, K. J., & Bradlow, A. R. (2007). Sentence recognition in native- and foreign-language multi-talker background noise. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 121, 519–526.Google Scholar
Van Wijngaarden, S. J., Steeneken, H. J. M., & Houtgast, T. (2002). Quantifying the intelligibility of speech in noise for non-native listeners. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 111, 1906–1916.Google Scholar