The effect of language, spatial factors, masker type and memory span on speech‐in‐noise thresholds in sequential bilingual children

Abstract

This study considers whether bilingual children listening in a second language are among those on which higher processing and cognitive demands are placed when noise is present. Forty-four Swedish sequential bilingual 15 year-olds were given memory span and vocabulary assessments in their first and second language (Swedish and English). First and second language speech reception thresholds (SRTs) at 50% intelligibility for numbers and colors presented in noise were obtained using an adaptive procedure. The target sentences were presented in simulated, virtual classroom acoustics, masked by either 16-talker multi-talker babble noise (MTBN) or speech shaped noise (SSN), positioned either directly in front of the listener (collocated with the target speech), or spatially separated from the target speech by 90° to either side. Main effects in the Spatial and Noise factors indicated that intelligibility was 3.8 dB lower in collocated conditions and 2.9 dB lower in MTBN conditions. SRTs were unexpectedly higher by 0.9 dB in second language conditions. Memory span significantly predicted 17% of the variance in the second language SRTs, and 9% of the variance in first language SRTs, indicating the possibility that the SRT task places higher cognitive demands when listening to second language speech than when the target is in the listener's first language.

Speech-in-Noise Perception in Children With Cochlear Implants, Hearing Aids, Developmental Language Disorder and Typical Development: The Effects of Linguistic and Cognitive Abilities

“…Memory span was not a significant predictor of SiN perception when language ability and speech perception in quiet were taken into account. The finding of a significant association between memory span and SiN is in line with a number of previous studies of children (MacCutcheon et al, 2018, 2019, submitted). Still, our results suggest that for children with hearing loss and language disorder, general language ability may be more closely related to SiN perception.…”

“…Moreover, the sentences mostly describe well known scenarios and thus allow the participant to use linguistic context and world knowledge to compensate for memory limitations. By contrast, the SiN task used by MacCutcheon et al (2018; 2019, submitted) where all sentences follow the same template with some items (colors and numbers) replaced in each sentence, does not allow for use of linguistic context or world knowledge.…”

“…On the other hand, Sullivan et al (2015) who measured comprehension of orally presented passages, found that the relationship between auditory working memory and comprehension was stronger in noise than in quiet, indicating an increased contribution of working memory in noisy conditions. Additionally, three recent studies of SiN perception in school age children and adolescents found a significant relationship between SiN perception and (backward or forward) memory span (MacCutcheon et al, 2018, 2019, submitted). In these three studies the SiN task involved identification of two changing target words in an otherwise fixed carrier sentence.…”

Effect of Seasonal Variation and Meteorological Parameters on the Environmental Noise Pollution in the Selected Areas of Rawalpindi and Islamabad, Pakistan

“…Another study evaluated the interdependence of air temperature, radiant heat, wind velocity and noise intensity; it was revealed that less noise in forests positively affects other factors' intensity. Consequently, a forest setting is more comfortable for people than in an urban setting during the summers [43]. The psychological responses to physical environments are also significantly related to air temperature, relative humidity, radiant heat, and wind velocity.…”

Investigating the Effect of One Year of Learning to Play a Musical Instrument on Speech-in-Noise Perception and Phonological Short-Term Memory in 5-to-7-Year-Old Children

“…Classroom noise is known to cause distraction and annoyance in children, but its primary effect is a reduction in speech intelligibility (for reviews, see Shield and Dockrell, 2003;Klatte et al, 2013), with a consequently negative impact on academic achievement (Shield and Dockrell, 2008). In typically developing children, the ability to cope with speech in noise (SiN) has been linked to individual differences in cognitive and language abilities (Nelson et al, 2005;Strait et al, 2012;MacCutcheon et al, 2019), age (Corbin et al, 2016), gender (Prodi et al, 2019), and supra-threshold auditory processing abilities (Lorenzi et al, 2000), as well as environmental factors, including reverberation and the spatial, spectral and temporal characteristics of the background noise (MacCutcheon et al, 2018(MacCutcheon et al, , 2019McCreery et al, 2019).…”