Graduation Year
2009
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree
Ph.D.
Degree Granting Department
Psychology
Major Professor
Catherine Rogers, Ph.D.
Co-Major Professor
Judith Bryant, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Cynthia Cimino, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Stefan Frisch, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Douglas Nelson, Ph.D.
Keywords
phonological, neighborhood, proficiency, noise, speech, perception
Abstract
In spoken word recognition, high-frequency words with few neighbors and less frequently occurring minimal pair neighbors (lexically easy words) are recognized more accurately than low-frequency words with many and more frequently occurring neighbors (lexically hard words). Bradlow and Pisoni (1999) found a larger easy hard word effect for non-native than native speakers of English. The present study extends this work by specifically comparing word recognition by non-native listeners with either earlier or later ages of immersion in an English-speaking environment to that of native English speakers. Listeners heard six lists of 24 words, each composed of 12 lexically easy and 12 lexically hard words in an open-set word identification task. Word lists were presented in quiet and in moderate noise. A substantially larger easy-hard word effect was obtained only for the later learners, but a measure of oral vocabulary size was significantly correlated with performance for the non-native listener groups only. Thus, the increased easy-hard word effect for non-native listeners appears to be explained as an effect of phonetic proficiency and/or vocabulary size on the structure of the lexical neighborhoods.
Scholar Commons Citation
Doty, Astrid Zerla, "Spoken word recognition in quiet and in noise by native and non-native listeners: Effects of age of immersion and vocabulary size" (2009). USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd/1939
