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- Title
Tonal Language Speakers Are Better Able to Segregate Competing Speech According to Talker Sex Differences.
- Authors
Juan Zhang; Xing Wang; Ning-yu Wang; Xin Fu; Tian Gan; Galvin III, John J.; Willis, Shelby; Xu, Kevin; Thomas, Mathew; Qian-Jie Fu
- Abstract
Purpose: The aim of this study was to compare release from masking (RM) between Mandarin-speaking and Englishspeaking listeners with normal hearing for competing speech when target--masker sex cues, spatial cues, or both were available. Method: Speech recognition thresholds (SRTs) for competing speech were measured in 21 Mandarin-speaking and 15 English-speaking adults with normal hearing using a modified coordinate response measure task. SRTs were measured for target sentences produced by a male talker in the presence of two masker talkers (different male talkers or female talkers). The target sentence was always presented directly in front of the listener, and the maskers were either colocated with the target or were spatially separated from the target (+90°, -90°). Stimuli were presented via headphones and were virtually spatialized using head-related transfer functions. Three masker conditions were used to measure RM relative to the baseline condition: (a) talker sex cues, (b) spatial cues, or (c) combined talker sex and spatial cues. Results: The results showed large amounts of RM according to talker sex and/or spatial cues. There was no significant difference in SRTs between Chinese and English listeners for the baseline condition, where no talker sex or spatial cues were available. Furthermore, there was no significant difference in RM between Chinese and English listeners when spatial cues were available. However, RM was significantly larger for Chinese listeners when talker sex cues or combined talker sex and spatial cues were available. Conclusion: Listeners who speak a tonal language such as Mandarin Chinese may be able to take greater advantage of talker sex cues than listeners who do not speak a tonal language.
- Subjects
ANALYSIS of variance; SPEECH audiometry; HEARING; MUSICAL perception; INTONATION (Phonetics); RESEARCH funding; STATISTICAL sampling; SEX distribution; SPACE perception; SPEECH perception; STATISTICS; DATA analysis; PHONOLOGICAL awareness; PROMPTS (Psychology); REPEATED measures design; DESCRIPTIVE statistics; MASKING (Psychology)
- Publication
Journal of Speech, Language & Hearing Research, 2020, Vol 63, Issue 8, p2801
- ISSN
1092-4388
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1044/2020_JSLHR-19-00421