CNRS UMR5292, INSERM U1028, Lyon Neuroscience Research Center, Auditory Cognition and Psychoacoustics Team Lyon, France.
Front Psychol. 2011 Jul 26;2:176. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00176. eCollection 2011.
If it is well known that knowledge facilitates higher cognitive functions, such as visual and auditory word recognition, little is known about the influence of knowledge on detection, particularly in the auditory modality. Our study tested the influence of phonological and lexical knowledge on auditory detection. Words, pseudo-words, and complex non-phonological sounds, energetically matched as closely as possible, were presented at a range of presentation levels from sub-threshold to clearly audible. The participants performed a detection task (Experiments 1 and 2) that was followed by a two alternative forced-choice recognition task in Experiment 2. The results of this second task in Experiment 2 suggest a correct recognition of words in the absence of detection with a subjective threshold approach. In the detection task of both experiments, phonological stimuli (words and pseudo-words) were better detected than non-phonological stimuli (complex sounds), presented close to the auditory threshold. This finding suggests an advantage of speech for signal detection. An additional advantage of words over pseudo-words was observed in Experiment 2, suggesting that lexical knowledge could also improve auditory detection when listeners had to recognize the stimulus in a subsequent task. Two simulations of detection performance performed on the sound signals confirmed that the advantage of speech over non-speech processing could not be attributed to energetic differences in the stimuli.
如果说知识有助于提高更高层次的认知功能，如视觉和听觉单词识别，这是众所周知的，那么关于知识对检测的影响，特别是在听觉模式下的影响，人们知之甚少。我们的研究测试了语音和词汇知识对听觉检测的影响。将尽可能紧密地匹配能量的单词、伪词和复杂的非语音声音在从阈下到清晰可听的一系列呈现水平上呈现。参与者执行了一个检测任务（实验 1 和 2），然后在实验 2 中进行了二选一的强制选择识别任务。实验 2 中这个第二个任务的结果表明，在主观阈值方法下，即使没有检测到，也可以正确识别单词。在两个实验的检测任务中，语音刺激（单词和伪词）比非语音刺激（复杂声音）在接近听觉阈值时更容易被检测到。这一发现表明语音在信号检测中具有优势。在实验 2 中还观察到了单词相对于伪词的额外优势，这表明当听众必须在后续任务中识别刺激时，词汇知识也可以提高听觉检测。对声音信号进行的两次检测性能模拟也证实，语音处理相对于非语音处理的优势不能归因于刺激中能量的差异。
