Acoustic-Phonetic Versus Lexical Processing in Nonnative Listeners Differing in Their Dominant Language.

Area of Science:

• Psycholinguistics
• Auditory Perception
• Second Language Acquisition

Background:

• Nonnative English listeners often struggle with word recognition due to underdeveloped acoustic-phonetic or lexical skills.
• Differentiating between these skill deficits is crucial for understanding and improving nonnative speech perception.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the distinct contributions of acoustic-phonetic and lexical skills to English word recognition in nonnative listeners.
• To utilize the j factor (Boothroyd & Nittrouer, 1988) to disentangle these two components of word recognition.

Main Methods:

• Participants: 15 native English speakers, 29 native Russian speakers (14 English-dominant [ED], 15 Russian-dominant [RD]).
• Task: Recognition of consonant-vowel-consonant real and nonsense words in speech-spectrum noise at +6 dB SNR.
• Analysis: Scoring word and phoneme recognition to calculate the j factor, representing the ratio of lexical to acoustic-phonetic efficiency.

Main Results:

• Word and phoneme recognition accuracy was similar for native English and ED listeners but significantly lower for RD listeners.
• Analysis of the j factor revealed less effective lexical information processing in RD listeners compared to native and ED listeners.
• The length of residence in the United States positively correlated with lexical processing effectiveness.

Conclusions:

• Language background significantly influences nonnative English word recognition.
• English-dominant (ED) nonnative listeners demonstrate nativelike lexical skills, suggesting their word recognition difficulties are not primarily lexical.
• Listeners dominant in their first language (RD) experience challenges due to combined lexical and acoustic-phonetic factors, requiring cautious interpretation of performance.