Non-native Listeners Benefit Less from Gestures and Visible Speech than Native Listeners During Degraded Speech Comprehension

• Published in: Language and speech Vol. 63; no. 2; pp. 209 - 220
• Main Authors: Drijvers, Linda, Özyürek, Asli
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England SAGE Publications 01-06-2020; Sage Publications Ltd
• Subjects: Comprehension; Female; Gestures; Humans; Listening comprehension; Male; Native speakers; Nonnative speakers; Photic Stimulation; Semantics; Speech; Speech Perception; Young Adult; degraded speech; integration; visible speech; non-native language processing; semantic integration; gesture
• ISSN: 0023-8309; 1756-6053
• DOI: 10.1177/0023830919831311

Native listeners benefit from both visible speech and iconic gestures to enhance degraded speech comprehension (Drijvers & Ozyürek, 2017). We tested how highly proficient non-native listeners benefit from these visual articulators compared to native listeners. We presented videos of an actress uttering a verb in clear, moderately, or severely degraded speech, while her lips were blurred, visible, or visible and accompanied by a gesture. Our results revealed that unlike native listeners, non-native listeners were less likely to benefit from the combined enhancement of visible speech and gestures, especially since the benefit from visible speech was minimal when the signal quality was not sufficient.