Differences in speech intelligibility in noise between native and non-native listeners under ambisonics-based sound reproduction system.

The current paper examines how native and non-native listeners of New Zealand English differ in terms of speech intelligibility in noise in a number of room acoustics reproduced by a first-order Ambisonics-based sound reproduction system. Speech intelligibility test was conducted under three room acoustics environments (living room, lecture theatre and church) using the sound reproduction system, where a pink noise masker was played from one of five azimuthal angles (0, 45, 90, 135, 180°) while the target speech was always played from 0°. We found significant two-way interactions between language nativeness and speech-noise separation, language nativeness and room acoustics, as well as between room acoustics and speech-noise separation. This suggests that native and non-native listeners respond differently to the virtually reproduced acoustic environments and they benefit from spatial release from masking in a different manner. Post-hoc results showed the native listeners performing significantly better than their non-native counterparts for all the angles of speech-noise separation and the room acoustics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]