Department of Communication Disorders, 493 Fitch Street, Southern Connecticut State University, New Haven, Connecticut 06515, USA.
Department of Psychological Sciences, 11635 Euclid Avenue, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio 44106, USA.
J Acoust Soc Am. 2023 Sep 1;154(3):1827-1837. doi: 10.1121/10.0021069.
Quantifying the factors that predict variability in speech-in-speech recognition represents a fundamental challenge in auditory science. Stimulus factors associated with energetic and informational masking (IM) modulate variability in speech-in-speech recognition, but energetic effects can be difficult to estimate in spectro-temporally dynamic speech maskers. The current experiment characterized the effects of short-term audibility and differences in target and masker location (or perceived location) on the horizontal plane for sentence recognition in two-talker speech. Thirty young adults with normal hearing (NH) participated. Speech reception thresholds and keyword recognition at a fixed signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) were measured in each spatial condition. Short-term audibility for each keyword was quantified using a glimpsing model. Results revealed that speech-in-speech recognition depended on the proportion of audible glimpses available in the target + masker keyword stimulus in each spatial condition, even across stimuli presented at a fixed global SNR. Short-term audibility requirements were greater for colocated than spatially separated speech-in-speech recognition, and keyword recognition improved more rapidly as a function of increases in target audibility with spatial separation. Results indicate that spatial cues enhance glimpsing efficiency in competing speech for young adults with NH and provide a quantitative framework for estimating IM for speech-in-speech recognition in different spatial configurations.
量化预测言语感知变异性的因素是听觉科学的一个基本挑战。与能量和信息掩蔽（IM）相关的刺激因素调节言语感知变异性，但在时频谱动态语音掩蔽器中，能量效应难以估计。本实验在双说话人语音中描述了短期可听度以及目标和掩蔽器位置（或感知位置）差异对句子识别的水平平面的影响。30 名具有正常听力（NH）的年轻人参加了实验。在每个空间条件下测量了言语接收阈值和固定信噪比（SNR）下的关键字识别。使用瞥见模型量化每个关键字的短期可听度。结果表明，即使在固定全局 SNR 下呈现刺激，言语感知也取决于每个空间条件下目标+掩蔽关键字刺激中可用的可听瞥见比例。对于共定位的言语感知，其短期可听度要求高于空间分离的言语感知，并且随着目标可听度的增加，关键字识别的改善速度更快。结果表明，空间线索增强了 NH 年轻人在竞争语音中的瞥见效率，并为不同空间配置下的言语感知中的 IM 提供了定量框架。
