S M I Ilarities of Words in Noise in Japanese

This paper investigated how Japanese listeners perceived words in a noisy environment. The data of a word identification in noise experiment reported in Yoneyama (2002) were analyzed. There are three main findings. First, more than 86% of the total responses correctly reproduced the pitch accent patterns of the stimulus words, suggesting Japanese listeners hardly misperceived pitch accent patterns of words in a noisy condition. Second, vowels were perceived more correctly than consonants. Third, MDS analyses revealed that similarities of sounds were mapped in terms of phonological features ([±high] and [±back] for vowels; [±voice] and [±sonorant] for consonants). These findings suggest that similarities of sounds that are highly related to the sonority scale of sounds in Japanese and pitch accent patterns contribute to word recognition in a noisy condition in Japanese.