Contributions of Auditory Stream Formation to Speech Perception

这项建议的目的是详细和定量地了解单声道和双声道分组线索对多说话者环境下语音可理解性的贡献。为此，专用刺激操作将被应用于多说话者设置，使得可能有助于听觉流分离的某些提示被呈现为无效。进一步的目标将是看看在两个阶段的概念框架中可以在多大程度上理解语音可理解性现象。在第一阶段中，假设语音可理解性需要所谓的一瞥的可用性，这意味着原则上可以由听觉系统在时间上和频谱上分辨的小的时频间隔，并且目标语音具有良好的局部信噪比。虽然这些惊鸿一瞥原则上是可用的，因为它们可以被外围听觉系统解决，但对于更中枢的听觉系统来说，选择属于目标说话人的惊鸿一瞥仍然是一个重大挑战。在两个阶段的概念框架中，假设在第二阶段使用单耳和双耳听觉分组线索来完成这一选择。在这项研究中，我们试图更好地理解其中几个分组线索的贡献。

The aim of this proposal is to get a detailed and quantitative understanding of the contribution of monaural and binaural grouping cues to speech intelligibility in multi-talker settings. For this purpose dedicated stimulus manipulations will be applied to multi-talker settings such that certain cues that may contribute to auditory stream segregation are rendered ineffective. The further aim will be to see to what extent speech intelligibility phenomena can be understood in a two-stage conceptual frame work. In the first stage it is assumed that speech intelligibility requires the availability of so-called glimpses, signifying small time-frequency intervals which in principle can be resolved temporally and spectrally by the auditory system and where the target speech has a favorable local signal-to-noise ratio. Although these glimpses are available in principle, because they can be resolved by the peripheral auditory system, it is still a major challenge for the more central auditory system to select the glimpses that belong to the target speaker. In the two-stage conceptual framework, monaural and binaural auditory grouping cues are assumed to be used in the second stage to accomplish this selection. In this study we seek to better understand the contribution of several of these grouping cues.