title: Determining the energetic and informational components of speech-on-speech masking.
abstract: Identification of target speech was studied under masked conditions consisting of two or four independent speech maskers. In the reference conditions, the maskers were colocated with the target, the masker talkers were the same sex as the target, and the masker speech was intelligible. The comparison conditions, intended to provide release from masking, included different-sex target and masker talkers, time-reversal of the masker speech, and spatial separation of the maskers from the target. Significant release from masking was found for all comparison conditions. To determine whether these reductions in masking could be attributed to differences in energetic masking, ideal time-frequency segregation (ITFS) processing was applied so that the time-frequency units where the masker energy dominated the target energy were removed. The remaining target-dominated "glimpses" were reassembled as the stimulus. Speech reception thresholds measured using these resynthesized ITFS-processed stimuli were the same for the reference and comparison conditions supporting the conclusion that the amount of energetic masking across conditions was the same. These results indicated that the large release from masking found under all comparison conditions was due primarily to a reduction in informational masking. Furthermore, the large individual differences observed generally were correlated across the three masking release conditions.
authors.affiliation: Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences and Hearing Research Center, Boston University, 635 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts 02215, USA.
authors.forename: Gerald
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Kidd
authors.affiliation: Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences and Hearing Research Center, Boston University, 635 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts 02215, USA.
authors.forename: Christine R
authors.initials: CR
authors.lastname: Mason
authors.affiliation: Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences and Hearing Research Center, Boston University, 635 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts 02215, USA.
authors.forename: Jayaganesh
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Swaminathan
authors.affiliation: Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences and Hearing Research Center, Boston University, 635 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts 02215, USA.
authors.forename: Elin
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Roverud
authors.affiliation: Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences and Hearing Research Center, Boston University, 635 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts 02215, USA.
authors.forename: Kameron K
authors.initials: KK
authors.lastname: Clayton
authors.affiliation: Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences and Hearing Research Center, Boston University, 635 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts 02215, USA.
authors.forename: Virginia
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Best
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001309:Auditory Threshold / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006309:Hearing; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D012737:Sex Factors; D013060:Speech; D013065:Speech Intelligibility / Q000502:physiology*; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D013997:Time Factors; D055815:Young Adult