Non-native word recognition in noise: the role of word-initial and word-final information

When listening in noisy conditions, word recognition seems to be much harder in a non-native language than in one’s native language. Native listeners use both word-initial and word-final information for word recognition in clean listening conditions, where word-initial information is the most important. When listening in noise, however, word-final information becomes relatively more important. This study investigates whether non-native listeners are able to use word-initial and word-final information when recognizing words in noise, and whether these information sources are equally important when listening conditions become increasingly harder. Forty-seven Dutch students 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 non-native listeners are able to use both word-initial and word-final information for word recognition, but fewer words were recognized with increasing difficulty of the listening conditions when the onset of words was masked. Thus, word-initial information is more important than word-final information for word recognition when listening conditions become harder. This increasing effect occurred independently from the proficiency level in the nonnative language of the participants, although proficiency level was correlated to test performance in general.