title: Word recognition performance in various background competitors.
abstract: Word recognition performance was measured for 18 normal-hearing subjects using the female talker version of the Northwestern University Auditory Test No. 6 (NU-6) in the presence of three background competitors: (1) a meaningful multitalker competing message consisting of three male and three female talkers (forward multitalker competing message [FCM]), (2) the same multitalker competing message recorded in reverse to eliminate semantic content (backward multitalker competing message [BCM]), and (3) an amplitude-modulated speech-spectrum noise (SSN) having the same long-term average spectrum and amplitude fluctuations as the meaningful multitalker competing message. The meaningful competitor had a significantly more deleterious effect on recognition performance compared to performance for the two nonmeaningful competitors. Furthermore, the nonmeaningful speech competitor produced a significantly greater degradation in performance than that for the SSN.
authors.affiliation: Department of Communicative Disorders, University of Wisconsin-Madison 53706, USA.
authors.forename: J L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Sperry
authors.forename: T L
authors.initials: TL
authors.lastname: Wiley
authors.forename: M R
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: Chial
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001301:Audiometry, Pure-Tone; D001302:Audiometry, Speech; D001309:Auditory Threshold; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009622:Noise; D013067:Speech Perception