Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania, 16801 USA.
J Acoust Soc Am. 2020 Oct;148(4):2006. doi: 10.1121/10.0002165.
Listeners often experience challenges understanding an interlocutor (target) in the presence of competing talkers (maskers). However, during linguistic release from masking (LRM), this difficulty decreases for native language targets (English) when paired with different language maskers (e.g., Dutch). There is considerable evidence that the linguistic similarity between target-masker pairs determines the size of LRM. This study investigated whether and how LRM is affected when the streams also differed in talker sex. Experiment 1 investigated intelligibility for English targets in sex-matched and mismatched conditions with Dutch or English maskers. While typical LRM effects were obtained when sex was matched, opposite effects were detected when sex was mismatched. In experiment 2, Mandarin maskers were used to increase linguistic dissimilarity and elicit stronger LRM effects. Despite the greater linguistic dissimilarity, the surprising reverse LRM effect in the sex-mismatch condition persisted. In experiment 3, the target stream was held constant and talker sex and language were manipulated in the masker. Here, expected LRM effects were obtained for both the sex-matched and sex-mismatched conditions. This indicated that the locus of the dissimilarities and not just relative properties affect LRM. Broadly, this study suggests that using naturally varying listening situations advances understanding of factors underlying LRM.
听众在存在竞争说话者（掩蔽者）的情况下经常会遇到理解说话者（目标）的困难。然而，在掩蔽释放期间（LRM），当母语目标（英语）与不同语言的掩蔽者（例如荷兰语）配对时，这种难度会降低。有大量证据表明目标-掩蔽者对之间的语言相似性决定了 LRM 的大小。本研究调查了当流在说话者性别上也存在差异时，LRM 是否以及如何受到影响。实验 1 研究了英语目标在与荷兰语或英语掩蔽者的性别匹配和不匹配条件下的可理解性。虽然在性别匹配时获得了典型的 LRM 效应，但在性别不匹配时检测到了相反的效应。在实验 2 中，使用普通话掩蔽者来增加语言差异并引起更强的 LRM 效应。尽管语言差异较大，但在性别不匹配条件下仍然存在令人惊讶的反向 LRM 效应。在实验 3 中，保持目标流不变，在掩蔽器中操纵说话者性别和语言。在这里，获得了性别匹配和性别不匹配条件下的预期 LRM 效应。这表明，差异的位置而不仅仅是相对属性会影响 LRM。总的来说，这项研究表明，使用自然变化的听力情况可以促进对 LRM 背后因素的理解。
