Effects of short-term perceptual training with written feedback on foreign-accented speech recognition in older and younger adults

Abstract

This thesis examined the ability of older adults to recognise foreign-accented speech; determining whether this can be enhanced by short-term perceptual training with written/orthographic feedback and using younger adults as a control group. Four experiments were conducted: The first experiment (Chapter 2) examined whether older adults have greater difficulty recognizing foreign-accented speech than younger adults. The results showed that although older adults overall had worse speech recognition in noise performance than younger adults, they did not have greater difficulty recognizing foreign-accented speech than younger adults. The second experiment (Chapter 3) investigated whether the short-term training with written feedback can help reduce the difficulty that older adults face in recognizing foreign-accented speech relative to younger adults; and whether the effects of such a training can generalize to novel talkers with the same foreign accent. The results showed that older adults were able to learn about foreign-accented speech characteristics to improve recognition, and they gained a larger benefit than younger adults. Both younger and older adults were also able to generalize learning to a novel talker. The third study (Chapter 4) investigated the long-term effects of the short-term training with feedback on older adults' recognition of foreign-accented speech. Results showed that older adults were able to maintain perceptual learning four months after training. The final experiment (Chapter 5) examined whether the short-term training with feedback can improve older adults' recognition of foreign-accented speech in noise. The results showed that older adults were able to improve recognition of foreign-accented speech in noise when training occurred in noise but not when given in quiet. Together, the results from this thesis demonstrated that short-term training with orthographic feedback enables effective and robust perceptual learning that enhances foreign-accented speech recognition, and so provides a useful method to facilitate older adults' spoken communication.

Date of Award	2020
Original language	English