Ives D Timothy, Vestergaard Martin D, Kistler Doris J, Patterson Roy D
Department of Physiology, Centre for the Neural Basis of Hearing, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3EG, United Kingdom.
J Acoust Soc Am. 2010 Jun;127(6):3729-37. doi: 10.1121/1.3377051.
Location and acoustic scale cues have both been shown to have an effect on the recognition of speech in multi-speaker environments. This study examines the interaction of these variables. Subjects were presented with concurrent triplets of syllables from a target voice and a distracting voice, and asked to recognize a specific target syllable. The task was made more or less difficult by changing (a) the location of the distracting speaker, (b) the scale difference between the two speakers, and/or (c) the relative level of the two speakers. Scale differences were produced by changing the vocal tract length and glottal pulse rate during syllable synthesis: 32 acoustic scale differences were used. Location cues were produced by convolving head-related transfer functions with the stimulus. The angle between the target speaker and the distracter was 0 degrees, 4 degrees, 8 degrees, 16 degrees, or 32 degrees on the 0 degrees horizontal plane. The relative level of the target to the distracter was 0 or -6 dB. The results show that location and scale difference interact, and the interaction is greatest when one of these cues is small. Increasing either the acoustic scale or the angle between target and distracter speakers quickly elevates performance to ceiling levels.
位置和声学尺度线索已被证明在多说话者环境中对语音识别都有影响。本研究考察了这些变量之间的相互作用。向受试者呈现来自目标声音和干扰声音的同时出现的三音节组，并要求他们识别特定的目标音节。通过改变（a）干扰说话者的位置、（b）两个说话者之间的尺度差异和/或（c）两个说话者的相对音量，使任务变得或多或少更具难度。尺度差异是通过在音节合成过程中改变声道长度和声门脉冲率产生的：使用了32种声学尺度差异。位置线索是通过将头部相关传递函数与刺激进行卷积产生的。在0度水平面上，目标说话者与干扰者之间的角度为0度、4度、8度、16度或32度。目标相对于干扰者的相对音量为0或 -6分贝。结果表明，位置和尺度差异相互作用，当这些线索之一较小时，这种相互作用最大。增加声学尺度或目标与干扰说话者之间的角度会迅速将性能提升到上限水平。
