How voice familiarity facilitates intelligibility of degraded and masked speech

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Following and understanding one particular conversational partner, despite interference from other sources, is a feat most of us accomplish every day. However, many processing operations are required so that, when hearing a complex auditory signal consisting of many different sources of sound (and their echoes), one source in particular (i.e., a voice) can be identified, tracked, and understood. My trainees and I study how experience and prior knowledge feed into voice listening and comprehension, particularly in noisy, everyday, conditions. Knowledge-guided processes (e.g., the use of meaningful context to perceptually ‘fill in’ masked or degraded speech) can dramatically improve perceptual organization and speech perception, but often require attention, which is probably why communicating in noisy social situations is effortful and often frustrating. One underexplored knowledge-based factor that may enhance comprehension while actually