TURNING INTO THE UNKNOWN: EXPLORING INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN UNFAMILIAR SPEECH PERCEPTION ACROSS GROUPS
Keywords:
foreign language perception, musicality, socio-economic status (SES), children, adolescents, adults, ADHD, musiciansAbstract
Research has shown that speech perception ability can vary tremendously depending on mechanisms such as musical ability, musical status second, and/or foreign language capacity. In this study, we wanted to assess individual differences in unfamiliar speech perception (auditory phonological pattern recognition) across diverse groups (children with and without musical training, adolescents and adults with varying levels of foreign language proficiency, with different degrees of musical ability and individuals with ADHD). Our sample consists of 724 participants (including N=56 individuals with ADHD) who voluntarily participated in this study. We divided the participants into different groups according to age (N=77 children; N=171 adolescents; N=476 adults), language and music background and tested them for their ability to perceive unfamiliar languages, as well, we assessed their musical background, their foreign language capacity, their educational status, the educational status of the parents and gender. Our study reveals that musical training has an impact on unfamiliar speech perception across ages. In adolescence, the impact of foreign language capacity and musical training seems to be of equal importance, while in adulthood, musical training surpasses foreign language capacity, particularly in comparison to adolescents. Individuals with ADHD showed reduced speech perception performance, suggesting potential challenges in early foreign language perception that warrant further investigation. In addition, SES based on parental education has been identified as a good predictor to outline individual differences in speech perception. However, current socioeconomic status does not significantly correlate with adult language perception; rather, childhood SES remains the primary determinant of these linguistic variations.
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