Individual differences in perception of unfamiliar speech

Substantial individual differences in speech perception emerge under adverse listening conditions, including when perceiving unfamiliar speech. In the present study, individual differences in word recognition for three varieties of unfamiliar speech—Spanish-accented English, Irish-accented English, and dysarthric speech—were investigated. We asked whether the ability to perceive these unfamiliar, and highly variable, speech signals correlated with performance on three linguistic and non-linguistic tasks. Individual word recognition scores were significantly correlated across all three types of speech. Further, cognitive and perceptual flexibility as well as receptive vocabulary were significant predictors of word recognition accuracy. The findings presented here are an important step in understanding what makes a listener successful at speech perception in adverse conditions, suggesting that both linguistic and non-linguistic cognitive abilities support word recognition with speech types that deviate from typical native dialect norms.