English Speakers' Perception of Non-native Vowel Contrasts in Adverse Listening Conditions: A Discrimination Study on the German Front Rounded Vowels /y/ and /ø/.

Previous research has shown that it is difficult for English speakers to distinguish the front rounded vowels /y/ and /ø/ from the back rounded vowels /u/ and /o/. In this study, we examine the effect of noise on this perceptual difficulty. In an Oddity Discrimination Task, English speakers without...

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Publicado en:Language & Speech Vol. 68; no. 1; pp. 162 - 181
Autores principales: Kaucke, Stephanie, Schlechtweg, Marcel
Formato: research tables/charts Journal Article
Publicado: Sage Publications Inc. Mar2025
Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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      dt: Mar2025
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      pub: Sage Publications Inc.
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        atl: English Speakers' Perception of Non-native Vowel Contrasts in Adverse Listening Conditions: A Discrimination Study on the German Front Rounded Vowels /y/ and /ø/.
      aug:
        au:
          Kaucke, Stephanie
          Schlechtweg, Marcel
        affil: Institute for English and American Studies, Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, Germany
      sug:
        subj:
          English Language Education
          Speech Perception Evaluation
          Vowels Evaluation
          Noise Adverse Effects
          Listening
          Task Performance and Analysis
          Discrimination
          Human
          Funding Source
          Female
          Male
          Adolescence
          Adult
          Middle Age
          Aged
          Germany
          Acoustic Stimulation
          Multilingualism
          Voice Quality
          Descriptive Statistics
          Comparative Studies
          Multiple Logistic Regression
          Adolescent: 13-18 years
          Adult: 19-44 years
          Middle Aged: 45-64 years
          Aged: 65+ years
          Female
          Male
      ab: Previous research has shown that it is difficult for English speakers to distinguish the front rounded vowels /y/ and /ø/ from the back rounded vowels /u/ and /o/. In this study, we examine the effect of noise on this perceptual difficulty. In an Oddity Discrimination Task, English speakers without any knowledge of German were asked to discriminate between German-sounding pseudowords varying in the vowel both in quiet and in white noise at two signal-to-noise ratios (8 and 0 dB). In test trials, vowels of the same height were contrasted with each other, whereas a contrast with /a/ served as a control trial. Results revealed that a contrast with /a/ remained stable in every listening condition for both high and mid vowels. When contrasting vowels of the same height, however, there was a perceptual shift along the F2 dimension as the noise level increased. Although the /ø/-/o/ and particularly /y/-/u/ contrasts were the most difficult in quiet, accuracy on /i/-/y/ and /e/-/ø/ trials decreased immensely when the speech signal was masked. The German control group showed the same pattern, albeit less severe than the non-native group, suggesting that even in low-level tasks with pseudowords, there is a native advantage in speech perception in noise.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype:
        research
        tables/charts
        Journal Article
      ougenre: Article
    language: English
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