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When listeners encounter a difficult-to-understand talker in a difficult-to-understand situation, their perceptual mechanisms can adapt, making the talker in the situation easier to understand. This study examined talker-specific perceptual adaptation experimentally by embedding speech from second-language (L2) English talkers in varying levels of noise and collecting transcriptions from first-language English listeners (ten talkers, 100 listeners per experiment). Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that prior experience with a L2 talker's speech presented first without noise and then with gradually increasing levels of noise facilitated recognition of that talker in loud noise. Experiment 3 tested whether adaptation is driven by tuning-in to the talker's voice and speech patterns, by examining recognition of speech-in-loud-noise following experience with the talker in quiet. Finally, experiment 4 tested whether adaptation is driven by tuning-out the background noise, by measuring speech-in-loud-noise recognition after experience with the talker in consistently loud noise. The results showed that both tuning-in to the talker and tuning-out the noise contribute to talker-specific perceptual adaptation to L2 speech-in-noise.
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This content will become publicly available on December 9, 2025
Race Identification in American English
Purpose:This study examined the race identification of Southern American English speakers from two geographically distant regions in North Carolina. The purpose of this work is to explore how talkers' self-identified race, talker dialect region, and acoustic speech variables contribute to listener categorization of talker races. Method:Two groups of listeners heard a series of /h/–vowel–/d/ (/hVd/) words produced by Black and White talkers from East and West North Carolina, respectively. Results:Both Southern (North Carolina) and Midland (Indiana) listeners accurately categorized the race of all speakers with greater-than-chance accuracy; however, Western North Carolina Black talkers were categorized with the lowest accuracy, just above chance. Conclusions:The results suggest that similarities in the speech production patterns of West North Carolina Black and White talkers affect the racial categorization of Black, but not White talkers. The results are discussed with respect to the acoustic spectral features of the voices present in the sample population.
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- PAR ID:
- 10559584
- Publisher / Repository:
- Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research
- Volume:
- 67
- Issue:
- 12
- ISSN:
- 1092-4388
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 4614 to 4627
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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