title: Rapid perceptual learning of noise-vocoded speech requires attention.
abstract: Humans are able to adapt to unfamiliar forms of speech (such as accented, time-compressed, or noise-vocoded speech) quite rapidly. Can such perceptual learning occur when attention is directed away from the speech signal? Here, participants were simultaneously exposed to noise-vocoded sentences, auditory distractors, and visual distractors. One group attended to the speech, listening to each sentence and reporting what they heard. Two other groups attended to either the auditory or visual distractors, performing a target-detection task. Only the attend-speech group benefited from the exposure when subsequently reporting noise-vocoded sentences. Thus, attention to noise-vocoded speech appears necessary for learning.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology and Centre for Neuroscience Studies, Queen's University, 62 Arch Street, Kingston, Ontario K7L 3N6, Canada. julia.huyck@queensu.ca
authors.forename: Julia Jones
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Huyck
authors.forename: Ingrid S
authors.initials: IS
authors.lastname: Johnsrude
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D009622:Noise; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D013065:Speech Intelligibility / Q000502:physiology; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D055815:Young Adult