0,0 0,1 0,2 0,3
T2 T4 T6 T8
F- F+
*
Number of Talkers
MeanCepstralVariation
Effect of the Number of Talkers in the babble on RTs (p = .01): T2 < T4, T6, T8 (Figure 1) Effect of Babble Word Frequency on RTs (p = .001): F- < F+ (Figure 2)
Number of Talkers x Babble Word Frequency interaction (p = .04): F- < F+ only for T2 and T8 (Figure 3) Acoustic analysis: babble word frequency in T8 due to differences in cepstral variation between F+ and F-
(Figure 4)
Understanding speech-in-speech: frequency effects of multi-talker babble on target word lexical access
Véronique Boulenger
1, Michel Hoen
2, Emmanuel Ferragne
1, François Pellegrino
1& Fanny Meunier
11
Laboratoire Dynamique du Langage, CNRS UMR 5596, Lyon, France
2
Stem Cell and Brain Research Institute, INSERM U846, Lyon, France Veronique.Boulenger@ish-lyon.cnrs.fr
Introduction
Speech-in-speech comprehension or the “cocktail party” phenomenon : an everyday situation, primary problem experienced by hearing-impaired people.
Two types of masking:
Informational masking may occur along the different psycholinguistic dimensions that characterize speech sounds: influence of the “speechness” (natural vs. reversed speech; Hoen et al., 2007) and of the language of the background (e.g.Mandarin vs. English; Van Engen & Bradlow, 2007) on target speech intelligibility.
Aim of the study: examine informational masking at the lexical level during speech-in-speech comprehension.
Participants
32 healthy right-handed French native speakers, aged 18-26, with no hearing or language impairment.
Stimuli
120 bisyllabic words, 120 bisyllabic pseudo-words embedded in sequences of 4s of mixed multi-talker babble (SNR = 0)
4 Number of Talkers x 2 Babble Word Frequency F+ and F- babble matched for F0and speech rate Task
Lexical decision to target items: decide as quickly as possible whether the target item is a word or a pseudo-word by pressing one of two buttons on a keyboard.
Measure of Response Times (RTs) for words (from word onset).
Statistical analysis
2-way repeated-measures ANOVA (Number of Talkers x Babble Word Frequency) Acoustic analysis of the multi-talker babble (see Hoen et al., 2007 for details)
Measure of mean cepstral variation (i.e. cepstral distance between consecutive subphonemic segments) for each multi-talker babble (using a statistical algorithm of detection of acoustic changes)
Results
Methods
Conclusions
Lexical properties of the babble contribute to informational masking during speech-in-speech comprehension.
Cocktail party situations as a new paradigm to:
Energetic masking: overlap in time and frequency between target and background.
Informational masking: information from target and background is of comparable nature. Highly relevant in the case of speech-in-speech situations as background carries linguistic information.
T2
F+
F-
T4
F+
F-
T6
F+
F-
T8
F+
F-
Figure 1 Figure 2
Bibliography
RT (ms)
Number of Talkers 990
1010 1030 1050 1070
T2 T4 T6 T8
*
990 1010 1030 1050 1070
F- F+
Babble Word Frequency
RT (ms)
*
Figure 4
990 1010 1030 1050 1070
T2 T4 T6 T8
F- F+
*
*
RT (ms)
Number of Talkers Figure 3
Boulenger et al. (2010). Real-time lexical competitions during speech-in-speech comprehension. Speech Com, 52(3), 246–253.
Hoen, M. et al. (2007). Phonetic and lexical interferences in informational masking during speech-in-speech comprehension. Speech Com,49, 905–916.
Van Engen, KJ & Bradlow, AR (2007). Sentence recognition in native and foreign-language multi-talker background noise. J. Acoust.
Soc. Am.,121(1), 519–526.
investigate competitive mechanisms that occur in real-time at different linguistic levels during language processing.
address the issue of unconscious speech processing (auditory subliminal priming).
To what extent lexical information from background is processed and can compete with recognition of target speech?
Determine whether and how frequency of words that compose the babble can influence lexical access to target words?
