Purpose The “bubble noise” technique has recently been introduced as a method to identify the regions in time–frequency maps (i.e., spectrograms) of speech that are especially important for listeners in speech recognition. This technique identifies regions of “importance” that are specific to the speech stimulus and the listener, thus permitting these regions to be compared across different listener groups. For example, in cross-linguistic and second-language (L2) speech perception, this method identifies differences in regions of importance in accomplishing decisions of phoneme category membership. This research note describes the application of bubble noise to the study of language learning for 3 different language pairs: Hindi English bilinguals' perception of the /v/–/w/ contrast in American English, native English speakers' perception of the tense/lax contrast for Korean fricatives and affricates, and native English speakers' perception of Mandarin lexical tone. Conclusion We demonstrate that this technique provides insight on what information in the speech signal is important for native/first-language listeners compared to nonnative/L2 listeners. Furthermore, the method can be used to examine whether L2 speech perception training is effective in bringing the listener's attention to the important cues.
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A one-man bilingual cocktail party: linguistic and non-linguistic effects on bilinguals’ speech recognition in Mandarin and English
Multilingual speakers can find speech recognition in everyday environments like restaurants and open-plan offices particularly challenging. In a world where speaking multiple languages is increasingly common, effective clinical and educational interventions will require a better understanding of how factors like multilingual contexts and listeners’ language proficiency interact with adverse listening environments. For example, word and phrase recognition is facilitated when competing voices speak different languages. Is this due to a “release from masking” from lower-level acoustic differences between languages and talkers, or higher-level cognitive and linguistic factors? To address this question, we created a “one-man bilingual cocktail party” selective attention task using English and Mandarin speech from one bilingual talker to reduce low-level acoustic cues. In Experiment 1, 58 listeners more accurately recognized English targets when distracting speech was Mandarin compared to English. Bilingual Mandarin–English listeners experienced significantly more interference and intrusions from the Mandarin distractor than did English listeners, exacerbated by challenging target-to-masker ratios. In Experiment 2, 29 Mandarin–English bilingual listeners exhibited linguistic release from masking in both languages. Bilinguals experienced greater release from masking when attending to English, confirming an influence of linguistic knowledge on the “cocktail party” paradigm that is separate from primarily energetic masking effects. Effects of higher-order language processing and expertise emerge only in the most demanding target-to-masker contexts. The “one-man bilingual cocktail party” establishes a useful tool for future investigations and characterization of communication challenges in the large and growing worldwide community of Mandarin–English bilinguals.
more » « less- Award ID(s):
- 2420979
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10512416
- Publisher / Repository:
- Springer Science + Business Media
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications
- Volume:
- 9
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 2365-7464
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Objectives: Bringing linguistic experience into code-switching (CS) constraints, a new hypothesis considers cross-language variable equivalence, which arises from within-language variability. Bilingual choices are assessed for Spanish-English CS between clauses, where subordinating conjunctions may not be consistently equivalent.
Methodology: Equivalence exists at the main-and-adverbial clause junction, inasmuch as the conjunctions are consistently present and placed the same way in the two languages. Equivalence is variable with main-and-complement clauses, because English complementizer that is mostly absent. Tokens of clause combining were extracted from the prosodically transcribed speech of members of a long-standing community in northern New Mexico who use both languages in their everyday interactions. Bilingual clause combinations were compared with their unilingual counterparts produced by the same speakers, as benchmarks.
Data and Analysis: Over 2,000 tokens of clause combining were coded for conjunction, subordinate clause type, prosodic connection, and CS direction for bilingual instances ( n = 189).
Findings: Bilinguals treat CS with complement and adverbial clauses differently. With complement clauses, the rate of CS is lower, prosodic separation is greater and, most notably, conjunction language choice is more asymmetrical. Spanish complementizer que is overwhelmingly selected over English that. In contrast, choice between causal conjunctions porque and (be)cause is affected by CS direction.
Originality: The Variable Equivalence hypothesis states that bilinguals favor CS with the equivalent option from one of the languages that is more frequent and predictable in their combined linguistic experience, considering both languages.
Significance: CS constraints are probabilistic (preferred CS sites) rather than categorical (permissible CS sites). The Variable Equivalence hypothesis accommodates variation in actual language use. Methodologically, comparing spontaneous CS with the same speakers’ unilingual production allows discovery of CS asymmetries. These asymmetries reveal quantitative bilingual preferences to switch at particular sites.
