Speech Intelligibility in Cross-dialectal Multi-talker Babble
Date
2009-06
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
The Ohio State University
Abstract
Informational masking occurs when speech is masked by conversational babble and
affects both peripheral auditory processing and central perceptual processing. Recent
studies indicate that linguistic interference contributes to informational masking but
provide little information about the significant linguistic characteristics of the
interference. To further examine the source of linguistic interference, this study
examines whether dialect differences between multi-talker babble used as a masker and
the target sentence change the effectiveness of the masker. Listeners were presented with
target sentences mixed with one of each of two dialect babbles at three different levels of
signal to babble ratios (S/B ratios): +5, 0 and -5 dB. Results indicated, as expected, that
performance decreased significantly as the S/B ratio was decreased but there was no
significant difference as a function of the number of talkers in the babble. The dialect of
the babble matched to the dialect of the speaker produced significantly more masking
than did the babble in the contrasting dialect (especially in the 0 dB context).
Description
Keywords
Speech Perception, Masking