Effects of Noise on Lexical Tone Perception by Native and Non-native Listeners

Speech in ecological environments is often accompanied by noise, which often proposes challenges to listeners. In this study we examined differences in native Mandarin-speaking and native English-speaking adults’ ability to perceive lexical tones and vowels in white noise and multi-talker babble noise at different signal-to-noise ratios. We found that although white noise impaired both listener groups’ speech perception ability, Mandarin multi-talker babble noise impaired Mandarin listeners to a greater extent. These results provide evidence for the differential effects of energetic and informational masking on native and non-native speech perception and the perceptual consequence of the reorganization of the auditory system after native language learning.