scholarly journals Auditory neural tracking and lexical processing of speech in noise: Masker type, spatial location, and language experience

2020 ◽  
Vol 148 (1) ◽  
pp. 253-264
Author(s):  
Jieun Song ◽  
Luke Martin ◽  
Paul Iverson
Keyword(s):  
Lexical Processing ◽  
Spatial Location ◽  
Language Experience ◽  
Speech In Noise ◽  
Noise Masker

Effects of language experience, use, and cognitive functioning on bilingual word production and comprehension

2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (6) ◽  
pp. 666-683 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kaitlyn A. Litcofsky ◽  
Darren Tanner ◽  
Janet G. van Hell
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Cognitive Functioning ◽  
Language Proficiency ◽  
Lexical Processing ◽  
Flanker Task ◽  
Word Production ◽  
Decision Task ◽  
Language Experience ◽  
L1 And L2 ◽  
The Impact

Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: Considerable research has investigated how bilinguals produce and comprehend words, focusing mainly on how bilinguals are able to select words from the appropriate language. Less research, however, has investigated whether production and comprehension involve the same underlying mechanisms. The present study explores this issue by examining whether production and comprehension, in the first language (L1) and second language (L2), are similarly influenced by factors relating to language experience, language use, and cognitive functioning. Design/methodology/approach Spanish-English bilinguals living in an English-speaking environment completed a picture naming task and a lexical decision task in their L1 and L2. In addition, participants completed the Operation Span task testing working memory and the Flanker task testing inhibitory control, and completed a language history questionnaire probing their language experience, relative proficiency, and codeswitching behavior. Data and analysis: Performance on all tasks was submitted to correlation analyses and the impact of individual difference measures on word production and comprehension was assessed via regression analyses. Findings/conclusions: Results showed that (1) production and comprehension were more closely linked in L1 than in L2; (2) production in L1 and L2 was predicted by language proficiency; and (3) comprehension in L1 and L2 was predicted by working memory. Originality: This is the first study to compare lexical processing in production and comprehension in both L1 and L2 and how these processes are influenced by language experience, use, and cognitive factors. Significance/implications: Word production and comprehension appear to be more tightly linked in L1 than L2, but seem to rely on different processing mechanisms.

scholarly journals Musical training, individual differences and the cocktail party problem

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jayaganesh Swaminathan ◽  
Christine R. Mason ◽  
Timothy M. Streeter ◽  
Virginia Best ◽  
Gerald Kidd, Jr ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Musical Training ◽  
Spatial Location ◽  
Large Individual ◽  
Cocktail Party ◽  
Cognitive Mechanisms ◽  
Cocktail Party Problem ◽  
Speech In Noise ◽  
Speech Science ◽  
Spatial Locations

Abstract Are musicians better able to understand speech in noise than non-musicians? Recent findings have produced contradictory results. Here we addressed this question by asking musicians and non-musicians to understand target sentences masked by other sentences presented from different spatial locations, the classical ‘cocktail party problem’ in speech science. We found that musicians obtained a substantial benefit in this situation, with thresholds ~6 dB better than non-musicians. Large individual differences in performance were noted particularly for the non-musically trained group. Furthermore, in different conditions we manipulated the spatial location and intelligibility of the masking sentences, thus changing the amount of ‘informational masking’ (IM) while keeping the amount of ‘energetic masking’ (EM) relatively constant. When the maskers were unintelligible and spatially separated from the target (low in IM), musicians and non-musicians performed comparably. These results suggest that the characteristics of speech maskers and the amount of IM can influence the magnitude of the differences found between musicians and non-musicians in multiple-talker “cocktail party” environments. Furthermore, considering the task in terms of the EM-IM distinction provides a conceptual framework for future behavioral and neuroscientific studies which explore the underlying sensory and cognitive mechanisms contributing to enhanced “speech-in-noise” perception by musicians.

scholarly journals The Clear-Speech Benefit for School-Age Children: Speech-in-Noise and Speech-in-Speech Recognition

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (12) ◽  
pp. 4265-4276
Author(s):  
Lauren Calandruccio ◽  
Heather L. Porter ◽  
Lori J. Leibold ◽  
Emily Buss
Keyword(s):  
Speech Recognition ◽  
School Age Children ◽  
School Age ◽  
Clear Speech ◽  
Adaptive Procedure ◽  
Sentence Recognition ◽  
Speech In Noise ◽  
Noise Masker ◽  
Children Speech ◽  
Speaking Style

Purpose Talkers often modify their speech when communicating with individuals who struggle to understand speech, such as listeners with hearing loss. This study evaluated the benefit of clear speech in school-age children and adults with normal hearing for speech-in-noise and speech-in-speech recognition. Method Masked sentence recognition thresholds were estimated for school-age children and adults using an adaptive procedure. In Experiment 1, the target and masker were summed and presented over a loudspeaker located directly in front of the listener. The masker was either speech-shaped noise or two-talker speech, and target sentences were produced using a clear or conversational speaking style. In Experiment 2, stimuli were presented over headphones. The two-talker speech masker was diotic (M 0 ). Clear and conversational target sentences were presented either in-phase (T 0 ) or out-of-phase (T π ) between the two ears. The M 0 T π condition introduces a segregation cue that was expected to improve performance. Results For speech presented over a single loudspeaker (Experiment 1), the clear-speech benefit was independent of age for the noise masker, but it increased with age for the two-talker masker. Similar age effects for the two-talker speech masker were seen under headphones with diotic presentation (M 0 T 0 ), but comparable clear-speech benefit as a function of age was observed with a binaural cue to facilitate segregation (M 0 T π ). Conclusions Consistent with prior research, children showed a robust clear-speech benefit for speech-in-noise recognition. Immaturity in the ability to segregate target from masker speech may limit young children's ability to benefit from clear-speech modifications for speech-in-speech recognition under some conditions. When provided with a cue that facilitates segregation, children as young as 4–7 years of age derived a clear-speech benefit in a two-talker masker that was similar to the benefit experienced by adults.

scholarly journals Perception of Speech in Noise: Neural Correlates

2011 ◽  
Vol 23 (9) ◽  
pp. 2268-2279 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judy H. Song ◽  
Erika Skoe ◽  
Karen Banai ◽  
Nina Kraus
Keyword(s):  
Fundamental Frequency ◽  
Background Noise ◽  
Transition Period ◽  
Auditory Brainstem ◽  
Auditory Brainstem Responses ◽  
Auditory Information ◽  
Neural Encoding ◽  
Language Experience ◽  
Speech In Noise ◽  
Perceptual Abilities

The presence of irrelevant auditory information (other talkers, environmental noises) presents a major challenge to listening to speech. The fundamental frequency (F0) of the target speaker is thought to provide an important cue for the extraction of the speaker's voice from background noise, but little is known about the relationship between speech-in-noise (SIN) perceptual ability and neural encoding of the F0. Motivated by recent findings that music and language experience enhance brainstem representation of sound, we examined the hypothesis that brainstem encoding of the F0 is diminished to a greater degree by background noise in people with poorer perceptual abilities in noise. To this end, we measured speech-evoked auditory brainstem responses to /da/ in quiet and two multitalker babble conditions (two-talker and six-talker) in native English-speaking young adults who ranged in their ability to perceive and recall SIN. Listeners who were poorer performers on a standardized SIN measure demonstrated greater susceptibility to the degradative effects of noise on the neural encoding of the F0. Particularly diminished was their phase-locked activity to the fundamental frequency in the portion of the syllable known to be most vulnerable to perceptual disruption (i.e., the formant transition period). Our findings suggest that the subcortical representation of the F0 in noise contributes to the perception of speech in noisy conditions.

scholarly journals Development and Preliminary Evaluation of a Pediatric Spanish–English Speech Perception Task

2014 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 158-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren Calandruccio ◽  
Bianca Gomez ◽  
Emily Buss ◽  
Lori J. Leibold
Keyword(s):  
Speech Perception ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Preliminary Evaluation ◽  
Language Performance ◽  
Speech Stimuli ◽  
Speech In Noise ◽  
Noise Masker ◽  
Conventional Measure ◽  
Speech Reception Thresholds ◽  
Competing Speech

Purpose The purpose of this study was to develop a task to evaluate children's English and Spanish speech perception abilities in either noise or competing speech maskers. Method Eight bilingual Spanish–English and 8 age-matched monolingual English children (ages 4.9–16.4 years) were tested. A forced-choice, picture-pointing paradigm was selected for adaptively estimating masked speech reception thresholds. Speech stimuli were spoken by simultaneous bilingual Spanish–English talkers. The target stimuli were 30 disyllabic English and Spanish words, familiar to 5-year-olds and easily illustrated. Competing stimuli included either 2-talker English or 2-talker Spanish speech (corresponding to target language) and spectrally matched noise. Results For both groups of children, regardless of test language, performance was significantly worse for the 2-talker than for the noise masker condition. No difference in performance was found between bilingual and monolingual children. Bilingual children performed significantly better in English than in Spanish in competing speech. For all listening conditions, performance improved with increasing age. Conclusions Results indicated that the stimuli and task were appropriate for speech recognition testing in both languages, providing a more conventional measure of speech-in-noise perception as well as a measure of complex listening. Further research is needed to determine performance for Spanish-dominant listeners and to evaluate the feasibility of implementation into routine clinical use.

Masked translation priming: Varying language experience and word type with Spanish–English bilinguals

2009 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-155 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHRIS DAVIS ◽  
ROSA SÁNCHEZ-CASAS ◽  
JOSÉ E. GARCÍA-ALBEA ◽  
MARC GUASCH ◽  
MARGARITA MOLERO ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Priming Effect ◽  
Lexical Processing ◽  
Word Type ◽  
Unrelated Word ◽  
Repetition Effect ◽  
Reduced Form ◽  
Decision Task ◽  
Single Group ◽  
Language Experience

Spanish–English bilingual lexical organization was investigated using masked cognate and non-cognate priming with the lexical decision task. In Experiment 1, three groups of bilinguals (Spanish dominant, English dominant and Balanced) and a single group of beginning bilinguals (Spanish) were tested with Spanish and English targets primed by cognate and non-cognate translations. All the bilingual groups showed cognate but not non-cognate priming. This cognate priming effect was similar in magnitude to the within-language repetition priming effect; it did not vary across participants who had different second-language acquisition histories, nor was the size of the priming effect modulated by the direction of the translation. The beginning bilingual group only showed cognate priming when the primes were in Spanish (L1) and the targets in English (L2). In Experiment 2, both form-related and unrelated word baselines were used with a single group of bilinguals. The results were the same as Experiment 1: cognate priming and no non-cognate priming. Experiment 3 examined the cognate priming effect with reduced orthographic and phonological overlap. Despite this reduced form overlap, it was found that the cognate effect was the same size as the within-language repetition effect. These results indicate that cognate translations are special and ways of modifying models of bilingual lexical processing to reflect this were considered.

scholarly journals Semantic Diversity, Frequency and the Development of Lexical Quality in Children’s Word Reading

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yaling Hsiao ◽  
Kate Nation
Keyword(s):  
High Frequency ◽  
Semantic Analysis ◽  
Lexical Processing ◽  
Word Reading ◽  
Reading Aloud ◽  
Language Experience ◽  
Main Effect ◽  
Low Diversity ◽  
Contextual Variability ◽  
Lexical Quality

Frequency exerts a powerful influence on lexical processing but it is possible that at least part of its effect is caused by high frequency words being experienced in more diverse contexts over an individual’s language experience. To capture this variability, we applied Latent Semantic Analysis on a 35-million-word corpus of texts written for children, deriving a measure of semantic diversity that quantifies the similarity of all the contexts a word appears in. Across three experiments with 6-13-year-old children involving reading aloud and lexical decision, we found a main effect of semantic diversity: high diversity words were responded to faster and read more accurately than low diversity words. Frequency, document count and age of acquisition were also significant predictors of reading behavior. These findings demonstrate that contextual variability contributes to word learning and the development of lexical quality, beyond the effect of frequency.

Bilinguals benefit from semantic context while perceiving speech in noise in both of their languages: Electrophysiological evidence from the N400 ERP

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Kristina Coulter ◽  
Annie C. Gilbert ◽  
Shanna Kousaie ◽  
Shari Baum ◽  
Vincent L. Gracco ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Speech Perception ◽  
Age Of Acquisition ◽  
Semantic Context ◽  
Language Experience ◽  
Final Word ◽  
Brain Potentials ◽  
Speech Perception In Noise ◽  
Speech In Noise ◽  
Effective Use

Abstract Although bilinguals benefit from semantic context while perceiving speech-in-noise in their native language (L1), the extent to which bilinguals benefit from semantic context in their second language (L2) is unclear. Here, 57 highly proficient English–French/French–English bilinguals, who varied in L2 age of acquisition, performed a speech-perception-in-noise task in both languages while event-related brain potentials were recorded. Participants listened to and repeated the final word of sentences high or low in semantic constraint, in quiet and with a multi-talker babble mask. Overall, our findings indicate that bilinguals do benefit from semantic context while perceiving speech-in-noise in both their languages. Simultaneous bilinguals showed evidence of processing semantic context similarly to monolinguals. Early sequential bilinguals recruited additional neural resources, suggesting more effective use of semantic context in L2, compared to late bilinguals. Semantic context use was not associated with bilingual language experience or working memory.

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