The effect of informational and energetic masking on foreign-accent adaptation

Speech understanding in noisy environments can be compromised through energetic (EM) and informational (IM) masking. EM reduces intelligibility of target speech through spectro-temporal overlap with the masker at the auditory periphery level. IM refers to the higher-level interference, such as competing attention, linguistic interference, and increased cognitive load. The present study examined the effects of EM and IM on foreign-accent adaptation. Native English listeners heard blocks of sentences produced by native-accented (NA) or foreign-accented (FA) talkers (Korean, Spanish) mixed with speech-shaped noise (SSN) or two-talker, native-accented babble and responded to a visual probe. Preliminary results show that listeners were more accurate and faster in babble compared to SSN. The more successful FA adaptation in the babble condition may be related to the presence of dips in the masker energy or the ability of listeners to successfully separate FA target from the NA background speech. Additionally, the acoustic properties of the target sentences, such as speaking rate and pausing, are examined to understand their effect on FA adaptation in each of the two noise conditions. These findings suggest that IM was less disruptive than EM for FA adaptation even though listeners were processing FA speech with an increased cognitive load.