Effect of continuous and interrupted noises on word recognition performance of monolinguals and bilinguals

Background and aim: Various studies indicate that background noise affects speech recognition ability of bilingual listeners (BL) more than monolingual ones (ML). However, no study has engaged in the speech recognition performance of Turkish-Persian bilinguals in the background noise. The purpose of the present study was to compare word recognition scores (WRSs) in the continuous and interrupted noises among ML Persian and BL Turkish-Persian young adults. Material and methods: The cross- sectional analytical study was conducted by presenting speech stimuli in quiet and in the background continuous and interrupted noises at signal to noise ratios (SNRs) of -20, -10, 0, +10 dB. Two groups of 33 ML Persian and 36 BL Turkish- Persian subjects with age ranging from eighteen to twenty-five years old participated Results: The degree of reduction in WRSs was significantly higher in the continuous noise relative to the interrupted one at four studied SNRs (p<0.0001) ; Moreover, the difference between WRSs of ML Persian and BL Turkish-Persian groups in the presence of both continuous (p≤0.001) and interrupted (p=0.002) noises was significant. Conclusion: It seems that Persian-words recognition ability of Turkish-Persian BLs reduces more than Persian MLs in the background noises and continuous noise affects speech perception ability more than interrupted one. Key words: bilingual, Persian, Turkish, background noise, word recognition