In this study, I compare the accuracy of automatic speech recognition (ASR) transcription against two measures of intelligibility provided by human listeners. The data came from readings of five texts recorded by 15 language learners of French. Human understanding was gauged by (i) asking a group of 36 naïve first language (L1) speakers of French…

Purpose: This study explored clear speech (CS) and noise-adapted speech (NAS) intelligibility benefits for native and nonnative English listeners. It also examined how the two speaking style adaptations interact with maskers that vary from purely energetic to largely informational at different signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). Method: Materials…

Learners' anxiety has drawn widespread attention in the field of second language/foreign language (L2/FL) teaching and learning (e.g. classroom anxiety, communication (with foreigners) anxiety, and anxiety associated with the four macro-skills, namely listening, reading, speaking, and writing). However, this topic is under-explored in L2/FL public…

Background: Intelligibility measurement is influenced by the characteristics of a speaker, listener and contextual factors. This study addresses the clinical problem of measuring speech intelligibility in children with velopharyngeal insufficiency (VPI) in real-world conditions. Aims: The purpose of the study was to investigate the effects of…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to characterize the acoustic profile and to evaluate the intelligibility of vowel productions in prelingually deafened, Mandarin-speaking children with cochlear implants (CIs). Method: Twenty-five children with CIs and 20 age-matched children with normal hearing (NH) were recorded producing a list of Mandarin…

Purpose: This study aimed to develop and test a measure of real-time continuous speech understanding to be used with natural dialogues. Method: The measure was based on a category monitoring paradigm and employed five existing recordings of natural dialogues from which the different test categories and associated target words were derived. For…

Many studies evidence the flexibility of speech perception in the first language (L1), which allows rapid adaptation to unfamiliar foreign accents. Two influential studies by Bradlow and Bent (2008) and a follow-up study by Baese-Berk et al. (2013) found that increased variability as a function of the number of talkers and accents facilitated the…

Automated real-time captions and subtitles are useful for implementing Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Checkpoint 1.2 that suggests offering a text-based alternative to auditory information for all learners to access the content equally. The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness of the "Microsoft PowerPoint Live"…

This study examined how mode of input affects the learning of pronunciation and form-meaning connection of second language (L2) words. Seventy-five Japanese learners of English were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 conditions (reading while listening, reading only, listening only), studied 40 low-frequency words while viewing their corresponding…

This study investigates how second language (L2) listeners' perception is affected by two factors: the listeners' experience with the target dialect -- North American English (NAE) vs. Standard Southern British English (SSBE) -- and talkers' language background: native vs. non-native talkers; i.e. interlanguage speech intelligibility benefit…

Background: Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) demonstrate deficits in vocabulary development and novel word learning processes, which have been proposed to stem from their speech perception deficits. Aims: This study had two aims. The first was to evaluate the efficacy of an intervention incorporating a computer-based phonetic…