The effect of hyperarticulation on speech comprehension under adverse listening conditions

Kangatharan, Jayanthiny, Uther, Maria and Gobet, Fernand ORCID: 0000-0002-9317-6886 (2021) The effect of hyperarticulation on speech comprehension under adverse listening conditions. Psychological Research, 86 (5). pp. 1535-1546.

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00426-021-01595-2

Abstract

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>Comprehension assesses a listener’s ability to construe the meaning of an acoustic signal in order to be able to answer questions about its contents, while intelligibility indicates the extent to which a listener can precisely retrieve the acoustic signal. Previous comprehension studies asking listeners for sentence-level information or narrative-level information used native listeners as participants. This is the first study to look at whether clear speech properties (e.g. expanded vowel space) produce a clear speech benefit at the word level for L2 learners for speech produced in naturalistic settings. This study explored whether hyperarticulated speech was more comprehensible than non-hyperarticulated speech for both L1 British English speakers and early and late L2 British English learners in quiet and in noise. Sixteen British English listeners, 16 native Mandarin Chinese listeners as early learners of L2 and 16 native Mandarin Chinese listeners as late learners of L2 rated hyperarticulated samples versus non-hyperarticulated samples in form of words for comprehension under four listening conditions of varying white noise level (quiet or SNR levels of + 16 dB, + 12 dB or + 8 dB) (3 × 2× 4 mixed design). Mean ratings showed all three groups found hyperarticulated speech samples easier to understand than non-hyperarticulated speech at all listening conditions. Results are discussed in terms of other findings (Uther et al., 2012) that suggest that hyperarticulation may generally improve speech processing for all language groups.</jats:p>

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Humans, Speech, Comprehension, Auditory Perception, Speech Perception, Noise
Divisions:	Faculty of Health and Life Sciences Faculty of Health and Life Sciences > Institute of Population Health
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	15 Dec 2021 10:43
Last Modified:	18 Jan 2023 21:19
DOI:	10.1007/s00426-021-01595-2
Open Access URL:	https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-021-01595-2
Related URLs:	Author Publisher
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3145394