Abstract
Recent studies showed that the residency experience of 1–3 year in English-speaking countries could improve temporal dip listening against energetic masking of noise (i.e., masking release), resulting in better performances in identification of vowel, consonant, and sentence in temporally fluctuating noise. The current study aimed to explore whether this advantage would be extended to speech and non-speech perception discrimination. Three groups of listeners were recruited: English-native listeners (EN), Chinese-native listeners in US with long US residency experience (i.e., 2.5–4 years; CNUL), and Chinese-native listeners in the US with short US residency experience (i.e., less than half a year; CNUS). Thresholds of spectral discrimination of speech and non-speech stimuli were measured. EN listeners are expected to have the lowest thresholds and highest masking release in vowel formant discrimination, followed by CNUL listeners, with highest thresholds and lowest masking release for CNUS listeners. Furthermore, the current study will also examine whether the effect of language experience on masking release would be presented for non-speech spectral discrimination in noise. [Work supported by the China National Natural Science Foundation (31628009).]