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Retroactive Streaming Fails to Improve Concurrent Vowel Identification

The sequential organization of sound over time can interact with the concurrent organization of sounds across frequency. Previous studies using simple acoustic stimuli have suggested that sequential streaming cues can retroactively affect the perceptual organization of sounds that have already occur...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Brandewie, Eugene J., Oxenham, Andrew J.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4599919/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26451598
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0140466
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author Brandewie, Eugene J.
Oxenham, Andrew J.
author_facet Brandewie, Eugene J.
Oxenham, Andrew J.
author_sort Brandewie, Eugene J.
collection PubMed
description The sequential organization of sound over time can interact with the concurrent organization of sounds across frequency. Previous studies using simple acoustic stimuli have suggested that sequential streaming cues can retroactively affect the perceptual organization of sounds that have already occurred. It is unknown whether such effects generalize to the perception of speech sounds. Listeners’ ability to identify two simultaneously presented vowels was measured in the following conditions: no context, a preceding context stream (precursors), and a following context stream (postcursors). The context stream was comprised of brief repetitions of one of the two vowels, and the primary measure of performance was listeners’ ability to identify the other vowel. Results in the precursor condition showed a significant advantage for the identification of the second vowel compared to the no-context condition, suggesting that sequential grouping mechanisms aided the segregation of the concurrent vowels, in agreement with previous work. However, performance in the postcursor condition was significantly worse compared to the no-context condition, providing no evidence for an effect of stream segregation, and suggesting a possible interference effect. Two additional experiments involving inharmonic (jittered) vowels were performed to provide additional cues to aid retroactive stream segregation; however, neither manipulation enabled listeners to improve their identification of the target vowel. Taken together with earlier studies, the results suggest that retroactive streaming may require large spectral differences between concurrent sources and thus may not provide a robust segregation cue for natural broadband sounds such as speech.
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spelling pubmed-45999192015-10-20 Retroactive Streaming Fails to Improve Concurrent Vowel Identification Brandewie, Eugene J. Oxenham, Andrew J. PLoS One Research Article The sequential organization of sound over time can interact with the concurrent organization of sounds across frequency. Previous studies using simple acoustic stimuli have suggested that sequential streaming cues can retroactively affect the perceptual organization of sounds that have already occurred. It is unknown whether such effects generalize to the perception of speech sounds. Listeners’ ability to identify two simultaneously presented vowels was measured in the following conditions: no context, a preceding context stream (precursors), and a following context stream (postcursors). The context stream was comprised of brief repetitions of one of the two vowels, and the primary measure of performance was listeners’ ability to identify the other vowel. Results in the precursor condition showed a significant advantage for the identification of the second vowel compared to the no-context condition, suggesting that sequential grouping mechanisms aided the segregation of the concurrent vowels, in agreement with previous work. However, performance in the postcursor condition was significantly worse compared to the no-context condition, providing no evidence for an effect of stream segregation, and suggesting a possible interference effect. Two additional experiments involving inharmonic (jittered) vowels were performed to provide additional cues to aid retroactive stream segregation; however, neither manipulation enabled listeners to improve their identification of the target vowel. Taken together with earlier studies, the results suggest that retroactive streaming may require large spectral differences between concurrent sources and thus may not provide a robust segregation cue for natural broadband sounds such as speech. Public Library of Science 2015-10-09 /pmc/articles/PMC4599919/ /pubmed/26451598 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0140466 Text en © 2015 Brandewie, Oxenham http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Brandewie, Eugene J.
Oxenham, Andrew J.
Retroactive Streaming Fails to Improve Concurrent Vowel Identification
title Retroactive Streaming Fails to Improve Concurrent Vowel Identification
title_full Retroactive Streaming Fails to Improve Concurrent Vowel Identification
title_fullStr Retroactive Streaming Fails to Improve Concurrent Vowel Identification
title_full_unstemmed Retroactive Streaming Fails to Improve Concurrent Vowel Identification
title_short Retroactive Streaming Fails to Improve Concurrent Vowel Identification
title_sort retroactive streaming fails to improve concurrent vowel identification
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4599919/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26451598
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0140466
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