The Listener Effect in Multitalker Speech Segregation and Talker Identification

Over six decades ago, Cherry (1953) drew attention to what he called the “cocktail-party problem”; the challenge of segregating the speech of one talker from others speaking at the same time. The problem has been actively researched ever since but for all this time one observation has eluded explana...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Lutfi, Robert A., Rodriguez, Briana, Lee, Jungmee
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: SAGE Publications 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8544763/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34693853
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/23312165211051886
_version_ 1784589885750902784
author Lutfi, Robert A.
Rodriguez, Briana
Lee, Jungmee
author_facet Lutfi, Robert A.
Rodriguez, Briana
Lee, Jungmee
author_sort Lutfi, Robert A.
collection PubMed
description Over six decades ago, Cherry (1953) drew attention to what he called the “cocktail-party problem”; the challenge of segregating the speech of one talker from others speaking at the same time. The problem has been actively researched ever since but for all this time one observation has eluded explanation. It is the wide variation in performance of individual listeners. That variation was replicated here for four major experimental factors known to impact performance: differences in task (talker segregation vs. identification), differences in the voice features of talkers (pitch vs. location), differences in the voice similarity and uncertainty of talkers (informational masking), and the presence or absence of linguistic cues. The effect of these factors on the segregation of naturally spoken sentences and synthesized vowels was largely eliminated in psychometric functions relating the performance of individual listeners to that of an ideal observer, d′(ideal). The effect of listeners remained as differences in the slopes of the functions (fixed effect) with little within-listener variability in the estimates of slope (random effect). The results make a case for considering the listener a factor in multitalker segregation and identification equal in status to any major experimental variable.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-8544763
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2021
publisher SAGE Publications
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-85447632021-10-26 The Listener Effect in Multitalker Speech Segregation and Talker Identification Lutfi, Robert A. Rodriguez, Briana Lee, Jungmee Trends Hear Original Article Over six decades ago, Cherry (1953) drew attention to what he called the “cocktail-party problem”; the challenge of segregating the speech of one talker from others speaking at the same time. The problem has been actively researched ever since but for all this time one observation has eluded explanation. It is the wide variation in performance of individual listeners. That variation was replicated here for four major experimental factors known to impact performance: differences in task (talker segregation vs. identification), differences in the voice features of talkers (pitch vs. location), differences in the voice similarity and uncertainty of talkers (informational masking), and the presence or absence of linguistic cues. The effect of these factors on the segregation of naturally spoken sentences and synthesized vowels was largely eliminated in psychometric functions relating the performance of individual listeners to that of an ideal observer, d′(ideal). The effect of listeners remained as differences in the slopes of the functions (fixed effect) with little within-listener variability in the estimates of slope (random effect). The results make a case for considering the listener a factor in multitalker segregation and identification equal in status to any major experimental variable. SAGE Publications 2021-10-23 /pmc/articles/PMC8544763/ /pubmed/34693853 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/23312165211051886 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
spellingShingle Original Article
Lutfi, Robert A.
Rodriguez, Briana
Lee, Jungmee
The Listener Effect in Multitalker Speech Segregation and Talker Identification
title The Listener Effect in Multitalker Speech Segregation and Talker Identification
title_full The Listener Effect in Multitalker Speech Segregation and Talker Identification
title_fullStr The Listener Effect in Multitalker Speech Segregation and Talker Identification
title_full_unstemmed The Listener Effect in Multitalker Speech Segregation and Talker Identification
title_short The Listener Effect in Multitalker Speech Segregation and Talker Identification
title_sort listener effect in multitalker speech segregation and talker identification
topic Original Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8544763/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34693853
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/23312165211051886
work_keys_str_mv AT lutfiroberta thelistenereffectinmultitalkerspeechsegregationandtalkeridentification
AT rodriguezbriana thelistenereffectinmultitalkerspeechsegregationandtalkeridentification
AT leejungmee thelistenereffectinmultitalkerspeechsegregationandtalkeridentification
AT lutfiroberta listenereffectinmultitalkerspeechsegregationandtalkeridentification
AT rodriguezbriana listenereffectinmultitalkerspeechsegregationandtalkeridentification
AT leejungmee listenereffectinmultitalkerspeechsegregationandtalkeridentification