The development of the Language-Independent Speech in Noise and Reverberation test (LISiNaR) and evaluation in listeners with English as a second language

Objective: Create a language-independent, ecologically valid auditory processing assessment and evaluate relative stimuli intelligibility in native and non-native English speakers. Design: The Language-Independent Speech in Noise and Reverberation Test (LISiNaR) targets comprised consonant-vowel (CVCV) pseudo-words. Distractors comprised CVCVCVCV pseudo-words. Stimuli were presented over headphones using an iPad either face-to-face or remotely. Scoring occurred adaptively to establish a participant’s speech reception threshold in noise (SRT). The listening environment was simulated using reverberant and anechoic head-related transfer functions. In four test conditions, targets originated from 0°. Distractors originated from either ±90°, ±67.5° and ±45° (spatially separated) or 0° azimuth (co-located). Reverberation impact (RI) was calculated as the difference in SRTs between the anechoic and reverberant conditions and spatial advantage (SA) as the difference between the spatially separated and co-located conditions. Study sample: Young adult native speakers of Australian (n = 24) and Canadian (25) and non-native English speakers (34). Results: No significant effects of language occurred for the test conditions, RI or SA. A small but significant effect of delivery mode occurred for RI. Reverberation impacted SRT by 5 dB relative to anechoic conditions. Conclusion: Performance on LISiNaR is not affected by the native language or accent of groups tested in this study.