Determinants of Success in Native and Non‐Native Listening Comprehension: An Individual Differences Approach

Abstract

The goal of this study was to explain individual differences in both native and non‐native listening comprehension; 121 native and 113 non‐native speakers of Dutch were tested on various linguistic and nonlinguistic cognitive skills thought to underlie listening comprehension. Structural equation modeling was used to identify the predictors of individual differences in listening comprehension and to test for differences between the native and non‐native participants. Listening comprehension for native speakers was found to be a function of knowledge of the language and the efficiency with which one can process linguistic information, while listening comprehension for non‐native speakers was a function of knowledge and reasoning ability. Working Memory did not explain unique variance in listening comprehension in either group. Differences in experience with the Dutch language are likely to explain the observed pattern of results for both groups.

Visual and auditory digit-span performance in native and non-native speakers

“…The study reported here is part of a research project aiming at explaining individual differences between and within native and non-native speakers of Dutch in performing a listening comprehension task in Dutch. The explanation of individual differences in listening comprehension is sought in participant characteristics such as age, level of education, non-verbal intelligence and WM capacity, and in performance on a range of verbal tasks (one of which was a Dutch vocabulary-size task) (Andringa, Olsthoorn, van Beuningen, Schoonen, & Hulstijn, 2012). Thus, one important question in the project was which type of WM task we should best use to predict individual differences in listening comprehension.…”

Correlates of older adults’ discrimination of acoustic properties in speech

“…Vocabulary A vocabulary test in the form of multiple choice questions was administered to obtain a measure of linguistic knowledge (Andringa et al, 2012). The computerized test was administered in Excel (Courier font size 15).…”

The effects of age and level of education on the ability of adult native speakers of Dutch to segment speech into words

“…This paper reports on data collected in the framework of a larger, NWO-funded project, called Studies in Listening (StiLis), in which 345 people took part (235 native speakers [NS] and 110 non-native speakers of Dutch), who were tested on a large number of tests (Andringa, Olsthoorn, Van Beuningen, Schoonen, & Hulstijn, 2012). 1 The present study is restricted to an examination of the performance of the participants in the speech-segmentation task as affected, on the one hand, by participant variables (age, level of education [LoE], nonverbal intelligence, working-memory capacity [digit span], and reaction time in a nonverbal task) and on the other hand by stimulus characteristics (stimulus length and reduction of articulation).…”

“…The focus of the project (Andringa et al, 2012) of which the study reported in this paper is a minor part, was concerned with the associations between higher-order listening comprehension on the one hand and, on the other hand, lexical knowledge, accuracy and speed of verbal-information processing, working-memory capacity and non-verbal intelligence. This is the main reason why no hearing test was administered, given that subjects were using headsets and were allowed to adjust the volume to their convenience in all listening tasks.…”

“…To control for individual differences in reasoning ability, intelligence was assessed with the complex matrices component of the WAIS-III, a measure of nonverbal IQ (Wechsler, 1997). For details about these three control measures, see Andringa et al (2012).…”