Clear speech intelligibility: Listener and talker effects

In this study, we investigated whether the intelligibility-enhancing mode of speech production, known as “clear speech” produced by native and non-native talkers influenced speech intelligibility equally for native and non-native listeners. In a series of three experiments, we explored the effect of clear speech for various native and non-native talker and listener pairs. Combined, the results showed that “native” speech is overall more intelligible than “foreign” accented speech for both native and non-native listeners. Importantly, the proportional intelligibility gain for clear speech produced by both native and nonnative talkers was similar across listener groups suggesting common speech processing strategies across all talker-listener groups.