McLaughlin, Drew J.2018-04-092018-04-092017https://hdl.handle.net/1794/23079Submitted to the Undergraduate Library Research Award scholarship competition: (2017-2018). 39 pages.During speech communication, both environmental noise and talker-related variation (e.g., accented speech) can create adverse conditions for the listener. Individuals recruit additional cognitive, linguistic, or perceptual resources when faced with such challenges, and they vary in their ability to understand degraded and/or variable speech. In the present study, we compare individuals’ ability on a variety of skills—including receptive vocabulary, selective attention, rhythm perception, and working memory—with transcription accuracy (i.e., intelligibility scores) for four adverse listening conditions: native speech in speech-shaped noise, native speech in single-talker babble, nonnative accented speech in quiet, and nonnative accented speech in speech-shaped noise. The results show that intelligibility scores within adverse listening conditions of the same class (i.e., either environmental or talker-related) significantly correlate. For cognitive, linguistic, and perceptual skills, receptive vocabulary significantly predicts performance on all four adverse listening conditions, while working memory only significantly predicts performance on conditions with nonnative accented speech. Rhythm perception was found to significantly predict speaker type (i.e., native versus nonnative speaker). Taken together, these results indicate that listeners may recruit similar resources when faced with adverse listening conditions in general, but specific additional resources when faced with certain types of listening challenges.enCreative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0-USOther