Benefit from spatial release from masking for native and non-native listeners in simulated room acoustics

While both native and non-native listeners have been found to benefit from spatial release from masking (SRM), the effect from SRM in adverse conditions with noise and reverberation may differ depending on their language nativeness. The current paper examines how 20 native and 20 non-native listeners of New Zealand English differ in terms of SRM in a number of simulated room acoustics under pink noise via a speech intelligibility test. Three room acoustics (living room, lecture hall and church) were simulated using a first-order Ambisonic based sound reproduction system with a 16 channel spherical loudspeaker array. The masker was played from 5 angles (0, 45, 90, 135, 180 degrees) where the target speech was always played from 0 degrees azimuth. We found significant two-way interactions between nativeness and angles of separation, nativeness and room type, as well as between room and the angles of separation between masker and target. This suggests that native and non-native listeners respond differently to the rooms and they benefit from SRM in a different manner. Post-hoc results showed the native listeners performing significantly better than their non-native counterparts for all the angles of separation and the rooms.