Perception of Japanese consonant-vowel syllables in reverberation: Comparing non-native listeners with native listeners

抄録

Long reverberation degrades the intelligibility of speech sounds. Previous studies have reported that non-native listeners have difficulty in understanding speech in reverberation more than native listeners. In the results of the previous studies, there was the possibility that lower identification scores for non-native listeners were attributed to non-native phonemes which did not exist in their native languages. The current study investigated the identification of Japanese consonant-vowel (CV) syllables in reverberation for native English listeners whose native language has counterparts to most or all Japanese consonants. The current study used 62 CV syllables as stimuli. The reverberation time of the reverberant condition was 2.7 s. The results showed that the correct answer rate for non-native listeners declined in the reverberant condition more than that for native listeners. There was significant difference between native and non-native listeners in the correct answer rate of /m, r, k, d, s/ in reverberation. The results suggested that non-native listeners had disadvantage in listening to non-native consonants even if their native languages had counterparts to the consonants. In addition, the results suggested that native English listeners might had advantage in finding acoustic cues of place of articulation in adverse environments because of the inventory of English.