Pupillary response to dynamic pitch alteration during speech perception in noise

Dynamic pitch, also known as intonation, conveys both semantic and pragmatic meaning in speech communication. While alteration of this cue is detrimental to speech intelligibility in noise, the mechanism involved is poorly understood. Using the psychophysiological measure of task-evoked pupillary response, this study examined the perceptual effect of altered dynamic pitch cues on speech perception in noise. The data showed that pupil dilation increased with dynamic pitch strength in a sentence recognition in noise task. Taken together with recognition accuracy data, the results suggest the involvement of perceptual arousal in speech perception with dynamic pitch alteration.