Effect of continuous and interrupted noises on word recognition performance of monolinguals and bilinguals

ABSTRACT

Various studies indicate that background noise affects speech recognition ability of bilingual listeners [BL] more than monolingual ones [ML]. However, no study has engaged in the speech recognition performance of Turkish-Persian bilinguals in the background noise. The purpose of the present study was to compare word recognition scores [WRSs] in the continuous and interrupted noises among ML Persian and BL Turkish-Persian young adults. The cross- sectional analytical study was conducted by presenting speech stimuli in quiet and in the background continuous and interrupted noises at signal to noise ratios [SNRs] of-20, -10, 0, +10 dB. Two groups of 33 ML Persian and 36 BL Turkish- Persian subjects with age ranging from eighteen to twenty-five years old participated. The degree of reduction in WRSs was significantly higher in the continuous noise relative to the interrupted one at four studied SNRs [p<0.0001]. Moreover, the difference between WRSs of ML Persian and BL Turkish-Persian groups in the presence of both continuous [p<0.001] and interrupted [p=0.002] noises was significant. It seems that Persian-words recognition ability of Turkish-Persian BLs reduces more than Persian MLs in the background noises and continuous noise affects speech perception ability more than interrupted one