Selective and Divided Listening in a Dual-Language Context

Area of Science:

• Auditory perception
• Bilingualism
• Speech processing

Background:

• Background speech masks target speech intelligibility.
• Dichotic presentation (sounds in separate ears) can mitigate masking, creating a 'dichotic advantage'.
• Second language (L2) processing is often more vulnerable to signal degradation than first language (L1).

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if L2 processing benefits more from the dichotic advantage than L1.
• To examine how attentional demands (selective vs. divided) affect the dichotic advantage in L1 and L2.
• To assess the impact of dual-language contexts on dichotic listening in bilinguals.

Main Methods:

• Spanish (L1)-English (L2) bilinguals performed selective and divided attention tasks.
• Participants listened to simultaneous Spanish and English sentences presented diotically or dichotically.
• Performance was measured for L1 and L2 under different listening conditions.

Main Results:

• Overall performance was better for L1 than L2.
• The dichotic advantage was similar for both L1 and L2.
• The dichotic advantage was smaller under divided attention compared to selective attention, indicating cognitive costs.

Conclusions:

• Bilinguals experience a comparable dichotic advantage for both L1 and L2.
• Cognitive load, especially under divided attention, can reduce the dichotic advantage.
• The dichotic advantage is robust even in dual-language settings and under high cognitive load.