The effect of voice cue differences on performance and effort during speech-on-speech listening

Thomas Koelewijn*, Deniz Başkent

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

Speech perception during two talker listening conditions can be challenging and effortful, especially in hearing impaired individuals. Perceiving differences in voice cues, such as fundamental frequency (F0) and vocal-tract length (VTL), seems to help segregating competing talkers, and improve speech understanding. Pupil dilation is an objective measure for cognitive processing load while listening to speech, also referred to as listening effort. Speech-on-speech perception relies on cognitive mechanisms such as inhibition of a speech masker, and as a result can be more effortful than a non-speech masker. However, it is unknown how voice cue differences can affect effort during speech-on-speech listening. In this study, participants listened to everyday sentences masked by competing speech consisting of random sentence segments (target to masker ratio = -6 dB) both uttered by the same talker. During the experiment, F0 and VTL voice cues of the speech masker were systematically manipulated and listening effort was measured by means of pupillometry. Results show that when F0 and/or VTL differed between target and masker speech speech-on-speech listening improved. Improvements in performance co-occurred with smaller peak pupil dilation responses during listening, indicating a decrease in listening effort. These outcomes provide a first insight on the impact of voice discriminability on listening effort.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationForum Acusticum 2023 - 10th Convention of the European Acoustics Association, EAA 2023
PublisherEuropean Acoustics Association, EAA
ISBN (Electronic)9788888942674
Publication statusPublished - 2023
Event10th Convention of the European Acoustics Association, EAA 2023 - Torino, Italy
Duration: 11-Sept-202315-Sept-2023

Publication series

NameProceedings of Forum Acusticum
ISSN (Print)2221-3767

Conference

Conference10th Convention of the European Acoustics Association, EAA 2023
Country/TerritoryItaly
CityTorino
Period11/09/202315/09/2023

Keywords

  • listening effort
  • pupillometry
  • speech perception
  • Voice cues

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