Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
International Journal of Bilingualism
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Right arrow Citing Articles via Scopus
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Rosenhouse, J.
Right arrow Articles by Kishon-Rabin, L.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Complore   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati   Add to Twitter  
What's this?

Speech perception in adverse listening conditions in Arabic-Hebrew bilinguals

Judith Rosenhouse

Technion - I.I.T. Israel, fwamtech{at}bezeqint.net

Lubna Haik

Tel-Aviv University, Israel

Liat Kishon-Rabin

Tel-Aviv University, Israel

Relatively little is known about the combined effects of adverse listening conditions on bilinguals' speech perception. This study examines the effect of (1) speech rate and (2) noise, separately and combined, on bilinguals' speech perception in L1 and L2. Participants were university students, native speakers of Arabic (L1), with Hebrew L2. Speech perception tests consisted of 64 CHABA sentences adapted to Hebrew and to Arabic (32 sentences per language). In each language, speech perception was evaluated under four conditions: quiet + normal speech rate; noise + normal speech rate; quiet + fast speech rate; fast speech rate + noise. The results showed that under optimal conditions, our native speakers of Arabic in Israel had similar achievements in Arabic (L1) and Hebrew (L2). Under difficult conditions, however, their performance was poorer in L2 than in L1: background noise had a greater detrimental effect than speech rate, and the combined detrimental effect of speech rate and background noise was greater for L2 than for L1. These results highlight the importance of attention to acoustic conditions and speaker related characteristics when testing speech perception in general and especially in the case of bilinguals.

Key Words: adverse listening conditions • bilinguals • Hebrew/Arabic languages

International Journal of Bilingualism, Vol. 10, No. 2, 119-135 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/13670069060100020101
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati   Add to Twitter Twitter    What's this?