Listening effort and multilingual speech communication: Neural measures of auditory and lexical processing by adults and older children

听力努力和多语言语音交流：成人和年龄较大儿童听觉和词汇处理的神经测量

• 批准号: ES/P010210/1
• 负责人: Paul Iverson
• 金额: $ 72.71万
• 依托单位: University College London
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2017 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FP010210%2F1
• 关键词: Listening; effort; multilingual; speech; communication

People feel like they need to "listen harder" when communicating in a second language, but it isn't clear how this effort changes the brain processes involved in recognising speech. Our initial research has produced a surprising finding; we tested people who were trying to listen to a talker in a noisy background (i.e., a distracting talker), and found that auditory areas of the brain are better at picking out the target talker when people are listening to a second language than their first language. We did this by recording neural activity (electroencephalography; EEG) and measuring how it becomes entrained to the acoustics of speech. Although people would normally be expected to perform better when listening to their first language, we think that second-language listeners had more selective auditory processing because of their additional listening effort. We found related effects for neural measures of word recognition in the same task, and think that we've found mechanisms that allow second-language learners to partially compensate for their speech recognition difficulties. In this grant project, we will expand our investigation in a series of studies that manipulate the acoustics of speech, and compare how speech is recognised in first and second languages by speakers of English and Korean. Furthermore, we will test adults who learned both languages at the same time when they were young children, adults who learned their second language later in life, and older children who are in the process of learning both languages. Our goals are to understand how people can use listening effort to compensate for their difficulties with second-language speech, and examine how this ability develops and relates to proficiency. This work is important for understanding how people apply their processes and structures for language during everyday speech communication, and is relevant to a wide range of difficult listening conditions (e.g., hearing impairment). The work will also advance our scientific understanding of how new measures of neural entrainment for speech relate to practical aspects of speech recognition.

人们感觉在用第二语言交流时需要“更加努力地倾听”，但尚不清楚这种努力如何改变涉及识别语音的大脑过程。我们的初步研究得出了一个令人惊讶的发现：我们对那些试图在嘈杂的背景下听说话者（即分散注意力的说话者）的人进行了测试，发现当人们听第二语言而不是第一语言时，大脑的听觉区域更能识别出目标说话者。我们通过记录神经活动（脑电图；EEG）并测量它如何夹带到语音声学中来做到这一点。尽管人们通常会在听第一语言时表现得更好，但我们认为第二语言听众由于额外的听力努力而具有更多选择性的听觉处理。我们发现了同一任务中单词识别的神经测量的相关影响，并认为我们已经找到了允许第二语言学习者部分补偿其语音识别困难的机制。在这个资助项目中，我们将扩大我们在一系列操纵语音声学的研究中的调查，并比较英语和韩语使用者如何识别第一语言和第二语言的语音。此外，我们还将测试小时候同时学习两种语言的成年人、晚年学习第二语言的成年人以及正在学习两种语言的年龄较大的孩子。我们的目标是了解人们如何利用听力努力来弥补第二语言演讲的困难，并研究这种能力如何发展以及与熟练程度的关系。这项工作对于理解人们在日常言语交流中如何应用其语言过程和结构非常重要，并且与各种困难的听力条件（例如听力障碍）相关。这项工作还将促进我们对语音神经训练的新措施如何与语音识别的实际方面相关的科学理解。

项目成果

Non-native speech recognition sentences: A new materials set for non-native speech perception research

非母语语音识别句子：非母语语音感知研究的新材料

• DOI: 10.3758/s13428-019-01251-z
• 发表时间: 2019
• 期刊: Behavior Research Methods
• 影响因子: 5.4
• 作者: Stringer L

Diminished brain responses to second-language words are linked with native-language literacy skills in dyslexia.

阅读障碍患者的大脑对第二语言单词的反应减弱与母语读写能力有关。

• DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2018.11.005
• 发表时间: 2019
• 期刊: Neuropsychologia
• 影响因子: 2.6
• 作者: Ylinen S

Accent Intelligibility Differences in Noise Across Native and Nonnative Accents: Effects of Talker-Listener Pairing at Acoustic-Phonetic and Lexical Levels

• DOI: 10.1044/2019_jslhr-s-17-0414
• 发表时间: 2019-07-01
• 期刊: JOURNAL OF SPEECH LANGUAGE AND HEARING RESEARCH
• 影响因子: 2.6
• 作者: Stringer, Louise;Iverson, Paul
• 通讯作者: Iverson, Paul

Auditory neural tracking and lexical processing of speech in noise: Masker type, spatial location, and language experience.

噪声中语音的听觉神经跟踪和词汇处理：掩蔽器类型、空间位置和语言体验。

• DOI: 10.1121/10.0001477
• 发表时间: 2020
• 期刊: The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
• 作者: Song J

Memory-card vowel training for child and adult second-language learners: A first report.

针对儿童和成人第二语言学习者的记忆卡元音训练：第一份报告。

• DOI: 10.1121/10.0016836
• 发表时间: 2023
• 期刊: JASA express letters
• 影响因子: 1
• 作者: Iverson P