Dr. Melinda Fricke has published a new article in the open access journal Languages, in collaboration with Dr. Megan Zirnstein of Pomona College. The paper examines auditory word recognition by second language and heritage speakers of Spanish, and asks how the ability to recognize Spanish words is impacted by noisy listening environments. They find that heritage, but not second language, Spanish listeners are able to cope with background noise by using semantically constraining sentence contexts to their advantage. They also find that listeners with more efficient inhibitory control abilities are better able to cope with interference from English background chatter.
Read/download Predictive Processing and Inhibitory Control Drive Semantic Enhancements for Non-Dominant Language Word Recognition in Noise