Biomaterial Database

The effect of linguistic background on staggered spondaic word and dichotic consonant vowel scores. 1987

R W Keith, and B Katbamna, and S Tawfik, and L H Smolak

This study was undertaken to determine the effect of linguistic background on scores obtained by native and non-native subjects on two dichotic speech tests in American English, the staggered spondaic word (SSW) and the dichotic consonant-vowel (CV) tests. Thirty subjects whose native languages were either Hindi or Arabic were tested. Test findings were compared to results obtained from 10 native English-speaking subjects. The non-native English speakers showed abnormally high error scores on the SSW test while the native speakers performed with no errors on that test. Performance on the dichotic CV test was comparable for both the native English and the Hindi subjects, while the Arabic subjects performed significantly worse than the two other groups. These data indicate that tests of speech perception using English must be interpreted with caution when administered to non-native English speakers, and that neither the SSW nor the dichotic CV tests may be assumed to be free of linguistic bias.

UI	MeSH Term	Description	Entries
D007194	India	A country in southern Asia, bordering the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal, between Burma and Pakistan. The capitol is New Delhi.	Republic of India
D008037	Linguistics	The science of language, including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and historical linguistics. (Random House Unabridged Dictionary, 2d ed)	Linguistic
D008877	Middle East	The region of southwest Asia and northeastern Africa usually considered as extending from Libya on the west to Afghanistan on the east. (From Webster's New Geographical Dictionary, 1988)	Gaza Strip,Near East,West Bank,Gaza Strip (Palestine)
D004007	Dichotic Listening Tests	Tests for central hearing disorders based on the competing message technique (binaural separation).	Dichotic Listening Test,Listening Test, Dichotic,Listening Tests, Dichotic,Test, Dichotic Listening,Tests, Dichotic Listening
D006801	Humans	Members of the species Homo sapiens.	Homo sapiens,Man (Taxonomy),Human,Man, Modern,Modern Man
D000328	Adult	A person having attained full growth or maturity. Adults are of 19 through 44 years of age. For a person between 19 and 24 years of age, YOUNG ADULT is available.	Adults
D001299	Audiometry	The testing of the acuity of the sense of hearing to determine the thresholds of the lowest intensity levels at which an individual can hear a set of tones. The frequencies between 125 and 8000 Hz are used to test air conduction thresholds and the frequencies between 250 and 4000 Hz are used to test bone conduction thresholds.	Audiometries
D013063	Speech Discrimination Tests	Tests of the ability to hear and understand speech as determined by scoring the number of words in a word list repeated correctly.	Discrimination Test, Speech,Discrimination Tests, Speech,Speech Discrimination Test,Test, Speech Discrimination,Tests, Speech Discrimination
D013067	Speech Perception	The process whereby an utterance is decoded into a representation in terms of linguistic units (sequences of phonetic segments which combine to form lexical and grammatical morphemes).	Speech Discrimination,Discrimination, Speech,Perception, Speech
D014481	United States	A country in NORTH AMERICA between CANADA and MEXICO.