Decoding child speech in silence and noise: the type of background noise shapes adult's processing

Processing speech that is non-canonical (i.e., child-produced speech) and/or presented in background noise can pose challenges for listeners. We investigated how listening to child-produced speech affects young adults’ word recognition under varying noise conditions. Participants (n=121) completed a two-picture eye-tracking task in one of three conditions: no background noise, pink background noise, and real-world background noise from LENA recordings. Participants heard a child or adult (Speaker-Age) direct attention to a generic (e.g., keys) or child-specific (e.g., potty; Item-Type) item. We examined the effect of Speaker-Age and Item-Type on participants’ looking time. In no background noise, accuracy was high, but participants were more accurate for adult speech and generic items. Both pink noise and real-world noise increased task difficulty. While participants were still more accurate for generic items in pink noise, the effect of the Speaker-Age was removed. Adding real-world noise removed the effects of both Speaker-Age and Item-Type, suggesting that participants use background noise to predict who will speak and what they might speak about. Overall, our results show that child-produced speech is more challenging to process than adult-produced speech, but listeners’ expectations in processing the upcoming speech might vary based on the environmental noise conditions.