Individual differences in speech-on-speech masking are correlated with cognitive and visual task performance

Individual differences in spatial tuning for masked target speech identification were determined using maskers that varied in type and proximity to the target source. The maskers were chosen to produce three strengths of informational masking (IM): high [same-gender, speech-on-speech (SOS) masking], intermediate (the same masker speech time-reversed), and low (speech-shaped, speech-envelope-modulated noise). Typical for this task, individual differences increased as IM increased, while overall performance decreased. To determine the extent to which auditory performance might generalize to another sensory modality, a comparison visual task was also implemented. Visual search time was measured for identifying a cued object among “clouds” of distractors that were varied symmetrically in proximity to the target. The visual maskers also were chosen to produce three strengths of an analog of IM based on feature similarities between the target and maskers. Significant correlations were found for overall auditory and visual task performance, and both of these measures were correlated with an index of general cognitive reasoning. Overall, the findings provide qualified support for the proposition that the ability of an individual to solve IM-dominated tasks depends on cognitive mechanisms that operate in common across sensory modalities.