Spatial release from energetic and informational masking in a selective speech identification task

Ihlefeld, Antje; Shinn‐Cunningham, Barbara

doi:10.1121/1.2904826

Cited by 115 publications

(88 citation statements)

References 64 publications

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“…A useful distinction can be made between those aspects of informational masking that cause difficulty in auditory object formation and those that cause difficulty in object selection (e.g., Ihlefeld and Shinn-Cunningham 2008). Consistent with this distinction, Roberts et al (2010) suggested that competitor formants reduce intelligibility because listeners are unable to reject them completely from the auditory perceptual organization of the sentence, which for optimum intelligibility should include only F1+F2+ F3.…”

Section: Informational Masking Of Speechmentioning

confidence: 94%

Effects of the Rate of Formant-Frequency Variation on the Grouping of Formants in Speech Perception

Summers

Bailey

Roberts

2011

JARO

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How speech is separated perceptually from other speech remains poorly understood. Recent research suggests that the ability of an extraneous formant to impair intelligibility depends on the modulation of its frequency, but not its amplitude, contour. This study further examined the effect of formant-frequency variation on intelligibility by manipulating the rate of formant-frequency change. Target sentences were synthetic three-formant (F1+F2+F3) analogues of natural utterances. Perceptual organization was probed by presenting stimuli dichotically (F1+F2C+F3C; F2+ F3), where F2C+F3C constitute a competitor for F2 and F3 that listeners must reject to optimize recognition. Competitors were derived using formant-frequency contours extracted from extended passages spoken by the same talker and processed to alter the rate of formantfrequency variation, such that rate scale factors relative to the target sentences were 0, 0.25, 0.5, 1, 2, and 4 (0= constant frequencies). Competitor amplitude contours were either constant, or time-reversed and rate-adjusted in parallel with the frequency contour. Adding a competitor typically reduced intelligibility; this reduction increased with competitor rate until the rate was at least twice that of the target sentences. Similarity in the results for the two amplitude conditions confirmed that formant amplitude contours do not influence across-formant grouping. The findings indicate that competitor efficacy is not tuned to the rate of the target sentences; most probably, it depends primarily on the overall rate of frequency variation in the competitor formants. This suggests that, when segregating the speech of concurrent talkers, differences in speech rate may not be a significant cue for across-frequency grouping of formants.

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Section: Informational Masking Of Speechmentioning

confidence: 94%

Effects of the Rate of Formant-Frequency Variation on the Grouping of Formants in Speech Perception

Summers

Bailey

Roberts

2011

JARO

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“…There are 2 major, but not necessarily exclusive, categories of masking: energetic masking and informational masking (Ihlefeld & Shinn-Cunningham 2008, Yost et al 2008. Traditional energetic masking refers to the case when the masking sound contains energy in the same frequency band and occurs at the same time as the signal of interest, such that the signal is inaudible.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Acoustic masking in marine ecosystems: intuitions, analysis, and implication

Clark¹,

Ellison²,

Southall³

et al. 2009

Mar. Ecol. Prog. Ser.

497

369

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Acoustic masking from anthropogenic noise is increasingly being considered as a threat to marine mammals, particularly low-frequency specialists such as baleen whales. Low-frequency ocean noise has increased in recent decades, often in habitats with seasonally resident populations of marine mammals, raising concerns that noise chronically influences life histories of individuals and populations. In contrast to physical harm from intense anthropogenic sources, which can have acute impacts on individuals, masking from chronic noise sources has been difficult to quantify at individual or population levels, and resulting effects have been even more difficult to assess. This paper presents an analytical paradigm to quantify changes in an animal's acoustic communication space as a result of spatial, spectral, and temporal changes in background noise, providing a functional definition of communication masking for free-ranging animals and a metric to quantify the potential for communication masking. We use the sonar equation, a combination of modeling and analytical techniques, and measurements from empirical data to calculate time-varying spatial maps of potential communication space for singing fin (Balaenoptera physalus), singing humpback (Megoptera novaeangliae), and calling right (Eubalaena glacialis) whales. These illustrate how the measured loss of communication space as a result of differing levels of noise is converted into a time-varying measure of communication masking. The proposed paradigm and mechanisms for measuring levels of communication masking can be applied to different species, contexts, acoustic habitats and ocean noise scenes to estimate the potential impacts of masking at the individual and population levels.

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“…In principle, ITDs and other spatial cues could benefit performance in a segregation task either by facilitating the segregation of a target source from background sources, or by making it easier to focus attention on the "correct" source amongst sources that are already well segregated Shinn-Cunningham, 2005;Ihlefeld et al, 2007;Shinn-Cunningham, 2008). Many of the previously documented benefits of spatial cues on understanding speech in sound mixtures likely derive from their influence on object selection.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In realistic listening situations, such as when attending to a particular speaker in a "cocktail party" environment, spatial cues indeed appear to aid segregation, improving the comprehension of target sentences in a background of other speakers (Bronkhorst, 2000;Drullman and Bronkhorst, 2000;Freyman et al, 2001;Hawley et al, 2004;Ihlefeld and Shinn-Cunningham, 2007). There are a few ways in which spatial cues could aid a listener in this situation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…When sound signals overlap in time and frequency so that the target is "energetically masked" by competing signals, interaural differences can be exploited to enhance the signal-to-noise ratio, lowering the relative level of the target required for it to be detected (Durlach, 1963;Akeroyd, 2004;Culling, 2007;Wan et al, 2010). However, spatial cues can also help listeners identify a target sound whose elements are clearly audible, as when ambiguities of grouping and=or selection interfere with performance, a situation known as "informational masking" (Kidd et al, 1998;Arbogast et al, 2002;Gallun et al, 2005;Shinn-Cunningham et al, 2005;Ihlefeld and Shinn-Cunningham, 2007). In such circumstances, the effect of spatial cues is most evident at longer timescales, such as when selecting between alreadysegregated objects, or in streaming sound elements such as syllables together (Darwin and Hukin, 1997;Darwin and Hukin, 1999;Kidd et al, 2005;Kidd et al, 1994).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Spatial cues alone produce inaccurate sound segregation: The effect of interaural time differences

Schwartz¹,

McDermott

Shinn‐Cunningham

2012

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

Self Cite

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To clarify the role of spatial cues in sound segregation, this study explored whether interaural time differences (ITDs) are sufficient to allow listeners to identify a novel sound source from a mixture of sources. Listeners heard mixtures of two synthetic sounds, a target and distractor, each of which possessed naturalistic spectrotemporal correlations but otherwise lacked strong grouping cues, and which contained either the same or different ITDs. When the task was to judge whether a probe sound matched a source in the preceding mixture, performance improved greatly when the same target was presented repeatedly across distinct distractors, consistent with previous results. In contrast, performance improved only slightly with ITD separation of target and distractor, even when spectrotemporal overlap between target and distractor was reduced. However, when subjects localized, rather than identified, the sources in the mixture, sources with different ITDs were reported as two sources at distinct and accurately identified locations. ITDs alone thus enable listeners to perceptually segregate mixtures of sources, but the perceived content of these sources is inaccurate when other segregation cues, such as harmonicity and common onsets and offsets, do not also promote proper source separation.

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Spatial release from energetic and informational masking in a selective speech identification task

Cited by 115 publications

References 64 publications

Effects of the Rate of Formant-Frequency Variation on the Grouping of Formants in Speech Perception

Effects of the Rate of Formant-Frequency Variation on the Grouping of Formants in Speech Perception

Acoustic masking in marine ecosystems: intuitions, analysis, and implication

Spatial cues alone produce inaccurate sound segregation: The effect of interaural time differences

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