Perception of time-compressed consonant-nucleus-consonant monosyllables by non-native speaker/listeners of English.

Recent investigations of time-altered speech have dealt with the effect of time compression and sensation level on intelligibility scores of native speaker/listeners of English. In the present investigation, the intelligibility of time-compressed consonant-nucleus-consonant monosyllables was studied using English speaker/listeners whose native languages are Spanish or Indo-Dravidian. Results supported earlier findings in that intelligibility decreased as a function of increasing percentage of time compression and decreasing sensation level. This effect was more prominent for the Indo-Dravidian than for Spanish speaker/listeners. The Spanish group of subjects showed generally lower difference scores than did the Indo-Dravidian group when compared to native English speaker/listeners.