Reception Thresholds for Sentences in Bilingual (Spanish/English) and Monolingual (English) Listeners

Abstract

Recent evidence on the perceptual performance of bilingual listeners suggests that a nonaudibility-based cost exists in processing a second language. That is, when compared to monolingual English speakers and early bilinguals, listeners who acquired English as a second language after puberty show reduced performance when listening to the second language in background noise, despite normal auditory thresholds. However, past studies have not controlled for the homogeneity of the bilingual participants used in auditory research; therefore, it is unknown whether the deficit observed in bilingual function is due to a lack of control for language-related variables. The ability of a homogeneous group of Spanish-English bilinguals and English monolingual listeners to perceive sentences in quiet and in noise at threshold levels was evaluated using the Hearing in Noise Test (HINT). Both groups performed similarly in quiet conditions. In the noise conditions, the bilingual group's performance was significantly poorer than the monolingual group's performance. However, both groups showed a binaural advantage of 7-8 dB when the signal and noise were separated by 90 degrees.Abbreviations: HINT = Hearing in Noise Test; L1 = first language; L2 = second language; RTS = reception threshold for sentences; SSI = Synthetic Sentence Identification SumarioLa evidencia reciente sobre el rendimiento perceptivo de sujetos bilingües sugiere que, en relación con el procesamiento de una segunda lengua, existe un costo no relacionado con la audibilidad. Esto es, cuando se les compara con hablantes monolingües del inglés y con bilingües de adquisición temprana, los sujetos que adquirieron el inglés como segunda lengua después de la pubertad, muestran una ejecución reducida cuando escuchan esta segunda lengua en medio de ruido de fondo incrementado, a pesar de tener umbrales auditivos normales. Sin embargo, los estudios anteriores no controlaron la homogeneidad de los participantes bilingües utilizados en investigación auditiva; por lo tanto, no se sabe si el déficit observado en la función bilingüe es debido a la falta de control de variables relacionadas con el lenguaje. Se evaluó la capacidad de un grupo homogéneo de sujetos bilingües en españolinglés y de sujetos monolingües en inglés para captar frases en silencio y en ruido, a niveles de umbral, con la prueba de Audición en Ruido (HINT). Ambos grupos rindieron en forma similar en condiciones de silencio. Pero en condiciones de ruido, el rendimiento del grupo bilingüe fue significativamente Reception Thresholds for Sentences in Bilingual (Spanish/English) and Monolingual (English) ListenersReception Thresholds for Sentences in Bilinguals/von Hapsburg et al peor que el rendimiento del grupo monolingüe. Sin embargo, ambos grupos mostraron una ventaja binaural de 7-8 dB cuando la señal y el ruido fueron separados por 90 grados.Palabras Clave: Bilingüe, percepción del lenguaje, umbral de recepción del lenguaje Abreviaturas: HINT = Prueba de Audición en Ruido; L1 = primera lengua; L2 = segunda l...

Effects of Stress, Stop Release, and Familiarization on Speech Recognition Thresholds

“…Previous research has shown that bilinguals may perform speech recognition tasks as equally well as their monolingual peers in quiet; degraded listening conditions, such as noise or reverberation, however, have been found to more adversely affect speech recognition performance in bilinguals than monolinguals despite normal auditory thresholds [31][32][33][34]. The current finding that monolinguals overall outperform bilinguals in the absence of noise has not been as widely reported in the literature.…”

Non-native speech perception in adverse conditions: A review

“…Two very clear conclusions emerge from these studies. Non-native listeners do indeed suffer more from increasing noise than natives when the task involves word or sentence processing in fixed or variable noise levels (Black and Hast, 1962;Gat and Keith, 1978;Florentine et al, 1984;Florentine, 1985;Buus et al, 1986;Mayo et al, 1997;Meador et al, 2000;van Wijngaarden et al, 2002;von Hapsburg et al, 2004;Cooke et al, 2008). However, for tasks which minimise or eliminate the possibility of using high-level linguistic information, noise has an equivalent overall effect on native and non-native listeners (Flege and Liu, 2001;Mackay et al, 2001a, b;Cutler et al, 2004;Rogers et al, 2006); even low-level predictability is better exploited by native listeners .…”

“…Indeed, several authors (von Hapsburg and Peña, 2002;von Hapsburg et al, 2004;Weiss & Dempsey, 2008) advocate a thorough description and control of several speaker variables that introduce heterogeneity in subject sample populations and have been shown to influence linguistic performance. However, in their own work, language proficiency is measured by selfassessment, which is an intrinsically subjective measure and may vary culturally (Hazan and Simpson, 2000).…”

“…• • Even bilinguals from infancy manifest differences in speech perception in noise as compared to monolinguals, although these differences are not apparent in quiet nor in speech production (Mayo et al, 1997;Rogers et al 2006;von Hapsburg et al, 2004). The bilingual-monolingual difference is not observed if the bilinguals use the other language less frequently (Mackay et al 2001a).…”

Effects of linguistic experience on the ability to benefit from temporal and spectral masker modulation

“…The non-native speakers tested in the current study were late bilinguals, defined by L2 acquisition at or after 10 yrs of age (von Hapsburg et al, 2004). Von Hapsburg et al (2004) tested SRTs using the clinical version of the Hearing in Noise Test (HINT; Nilsson et al, 1994) in native monolingual English speakers and late bilinguals, whose L1 was Spanish and L2 was English. The non-native speakers in that study required an SNR up to 3.9 dB higher than the native speakers to achieve similar recognition on the HINT.…”