Does the Importance of Word-Initial and Word-Final Information Differ in Native versus Non-Native Spoken-Word Recognition?

This paper investigates whether the importance and use of word-initial and word-final information in spoken-word recognition is dependent on whether one is listening in a native or a non-native language and on the presence of background noise. Native English and non-native Dutch and Finnish listeners participated in an English word recognition experiment, where either a word’s onset or offset was masked by speech-shaped noise with different signal-to-noise ratios. The results showed that for all listener groups the masking of word onset information was more detrimental to spoken-word recognition than the masking of word offset information. The reliance on word-initial information was larger in harder listening conditions for the English but not so for the Dutch and Finnish listeners. Moreover, no significant differences in the use of word-initial and word-final information were found between the two non-native listener groups. Taken together, these results show that the reliance on word-initial information in deteriorating listening conditions seems to be dependent on whether one is listening in one’s native or a non-native language rather than on the listener’s native language.