Faculty of Science and Technology, Department of Foreign Language and Liberal Arts, Keio University, 4 Chome-1-1 Hiyoshi, Kohoku Ward, Yokohama, Kanagawa, 223-8521, Japan.
Atten Percept Psychophys. 2021 Aug;83(6):2675-2693. doi: 10.3758/s13414-021-02258-5. Epub 2021 Apr 16.
Nonnative listeners are generally not as good as native listeners in perceptually restoring degraded speech and understand what was being said. The current study investigates how nonnative listeners of English (namely, native Japanese speakers who learned English as a second language) perceptually restore temporally distorted speech in their L2 English as compared with native English listeners (L1 English) reported in Ishida et al. (Cognition, 151, 68-75, 2016), and as compared with the listeners' native tongue (L1 Japanese). In the experiment, listeners listened to locally time-reversed words and pseudowords in their L2 English and L1 Japanese where every 10, 30, 50, 70, 90, or 110 ms of speech signal was flipped in time-these stimuli contained either many fricatives or stops. The results suggested that the intelligibility of locally time-reversed words and pseudowords deteriorated as the length of reversed segments increased in both listeners' L2 English and L1 Japanese, while listeners understood locally time-reversed speech more in their L1 Japanese. In addition, lexical context supported perceptual restoration in both listeners' L1 Japanese and L2 English, while phonemic constituents affected perceptual restoration significantly only in listeners' L1. On the other hand, locally time-reversed words and pseudowords in L1 Japanese were much more intelligible than those in L1 English reported in Ishida et al. It is possible that the intelligibility of temporally distorted lexical items depends on the structure of basic linguistic units in each language, and the Japanese language might have a unique characteristic because of its CV and V structure.
非母语者在感知恢复语音退化和理解所说话语方面通常不如母语者。本研究调查了英语非母语者（即，以英语为第二语言学习的母语为日语的人）如何在感知上恢复英语 L2 中时间扭曲的语音，与 Ishida 等人报告的英语母语者（L1 英语）相比（认知，151，68-75，2016），以及与听众的母语（L1 日语）相比。在实验中，听众在他们的 L2 英语和 L1 日语中听到局部时间反转的单词和伪词，其中每 10、30、50、70、90 或 110 ms 的语音信号反转时间——这些刺激包含许多摩擦音或停止音。结果表明，在 L2 英语和 L1 日语中，随着反转段长度的增加，局部时间反转的单词和伪词的可懂度下降，而听众在 L1 日语中理解局部时间反转的语音更多。此外，词汇语境在听众的 L1 日语和 L2 英语中都支持感知恢复，而音位成分仅在听众的 L1 中显著影响感知恢复。另一方面，L1 日语中的局部时间反转单词和伪词比 Ishida 等人报告的 L1 英语中的更易理解。时间扭曲的词汇项的可懂度可能取决于每种语言中基本语言单位的结构，而日语可能具有独特的特征，因为它具有 CV 和 V 结构。
