Recognition of accented English in quiet by younger normal-hearing listeners and older listeners with normal-hearing and hearing loss

Abstract

This investigation examined the effects of listener age and hearing loss on recognition of accented speech. Speech materials were isolated English words and sentences that featured phonemes that are often mispronounced by non-native speakers of English whose first language is Spanish. These stimuli were recorded by a native speaker of English and two non-native speakers of English: one with a mild accent and one with a moderate accent. The stimuli were presented in quiet to younger and older adults with normal-hearing and older adults with hearing loss. Analysis of percent correct recognition scores showed that all listeners performed more poorly with increasing accent, and older listeners with hearing loss performed more poorly than the younger and older normal-hearing listeners in all accent conditions. Context and age effects were minimal. Consonant confusion patterns in the moderate accent condition showed that error patterns of all listeners reflected temporal alterations with accented speech, with major errors of word-final consonant voicing in stops and fricatives, and word-initial fricatives.

Figures

Figure 1

Percent correct recognition scores for isolated words and words in sentences of three listener groups in three accent conditions. Error bars reflect one standard error of the mean.

Figure 2

Percent phoneme error of the three listener groups for consonants in word-initial position, consonants in word-final position, and vowels, shown separately for the three accent conditions. Error bars reflect one standard error of the mean.

Figure 3

Duration (in millisecond) of target cues for voiced and voiceless speech contrasts produced by the native speaker and accented speaker. Top panel presents duration of voiceless frication as a cue for word-initial fricative voicing for eight word pairs; bottom panel presents vowel duration as a cue for voicing in word-final consonants for ten word pairs.