Linguistic Context Versus Semantic Competition in Word Recognition by Younger and Older Adults With Cochlear Implants.

Objectives: The increasing numbers of older adults now receiving cochlear implants raises the question of how the novel signal produced by cochlear implants may interact with cognitive aging in the recognition of words heard spoken within a linguistic context. The objective of this study was to pit the facilitative effects of a constraining linguistic context against a potential age-sensitive negative effect of response competition on effectiveness of word recognition.

Design: Younger (n = 8; mean age = 22.

Perception of Nonnative-accented Sentences by 5- to 8-Year-olds and Adults: The Role of Phonological Processing Skills.

To acquire language and successfully communicate in multicultural and multilingual societies, children must learn to understand speakers with various accents and dialects. This study investigated adults' and 5- to 8-year-old children's perception of native- and nonnative-accented English sentences in noise. Participants' phonological memory and phonological awareness were assessed to investigate factors associated with individual differences in word recognition.

Nonnative Accent Discrimination with Words and Sentences.

Background: Accent detection studies have shown native listeners to be highly sensitive to the presence of nonnative accents. This study examined the robustness of this sensitivity.

Methods: We evaluated listeners' accent discrimination performance when presented with a stimulus set consisting of multiple nonnative accents, as well as words and sentences that were unique in each trial.

Children's perception of nonnative-accented sentences in noise and quiet.

Adult listeners' word recognition is remarkably robust under a variety of adverse listening conditions. However, the combination of two simultaneous listening challenges (e.g.

Relationship between listeners' nonnative speech recognition and categorization abilities.

Enhancement of the perceptual encoding of talker characteristics (indexical information) in speech can facilitate listeners' recognition of linguistic content. The present study explored this indexical-linguistic relationship in nonnative speech processing by examining listeners' performance on two tasks: nonnative accent categorization and nonnative speech-in-noise recognition. Results indicated substantial variability across listeners in their performance on both the accent categorization and nonnative speech recognition tasks.

Auditory free classification of nonnative speech.

Through experience with speech variability, listeners build categories of indexical speech characteristics including categories for talker, gender, and dialect. The auditory free classification task-a task in which listeners freely group talkers based on audio samples-has been a useful tool for examining listeners' representations of some of these characteristics including regional dialects and different languages. The free classification task was employed in the current study to examine the perceptual representation of nonnative speech.