Journal
JOURNAL OF THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA
Volume 126, Issue 1, Pages 269-280Publisher
ACOUSTICAL SOC AMER AMER INST PHYSICS
DOI: 10.1121/1.3129506
Keywords
acoustic noise; amplitude modulation; hearing; speech intelligibility
Categories
Funding
- NIH NIDCD [R01 DC000418]
Ask authors/readers for more resources
For normal-hearing listeners, masked speech recognition can improve with the introduction of masker amplitude modulation. The present experiments tested the hypothesis that this masking release is due in part to an interaction between the temporal distribution of cues necessary to perform the task and the probability of those cues temporally coinciding with masker modulation minima. Stimuli were monosyllabic words masked by speech-shaped noise, and masker modulation was introduced via multiplication with a raised sinusoid of 2.5-40 Hz. Tasks included detection, three-alternative forced-choice identification, and open-set identification. Overall, there was more masking release associated with the closed than the open-set tasks. The best rate of modulation also differed as a function of task; whereas low modulation rates were associated with best performance for the detection and three-alternative identification tasks, performance improved with modulation rate in the open-set task. This task-by-rate interaction was also observed when amplitude-modulated speech was presented in a steady masker, and for low- and high-pass filtered speech presented in modulated noise. These results were interpreted as showing that the optimal rate of amplitude modulation depends on the temporal distribution of speech cues and the information required to perform a particular task.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available