The effect of perceived spatial separation on informational masking of Chinese speech

Xihong Wu; Chun Wang; Jing Chen; Hongwei Qu; Wenrui Li; Yanhong Wu; Bruce A. Schneider; Liang Li

doi:10.1016/j.heares.2004.03.010

The effect of perceived spatial separation on informational masking of Chinese speech

Xihong Wu, Chun Wang, Jing Chen, Hongwei Qu, Wenrui Li, Yanhong Wu, Bruce A. Schneider, Liang Li

Psychology (Twin Cities)

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

57 Scopus citations

Abstract

The effect of perceived spatial separation, induced by the precedence effect, on release from noise or speech masking was investigated. Listeners were asked to orally repeat Chinese nonsense sentences, which were spoken by a female talker and presented by both the left (-45°) and right (+45°) loudspeakers, when maskers, which were either speech-spectrum noise sounds or Chinese nonsense sentences spoken by two other female talkers, were presented by the same two loudspeakers. Delays between identical sounds presented over the two loudspeakers were used to control the perceived locations of the target (right only) and masker (right, center, or left). The results show that perceived 45° and 90° separations of target speech from masking speech led to equivalently marked improvement in speech recognition, even though the degree of improvement was smaller than that reported in [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 106 (1999) 3578 (using English nonsense speech)]. When the masker was noise, however, perceived separation only marginally improved speech recognition. These results indicate that release from informational masking, due to perceived target/masker spatial separation induced by the precedence effect, also occurs for tonal Chinese speech. Compared to the 45° perceived within-hemifield separation, the 90° perceived cross-hemifield separation does not produce further unmasking.

Original language	English (US)
Pages (from-to)	1-10
Number of pages	10
Journal	Hearing Research
Volume	199
Issue number	1-2
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heares.2004.03.010
State	Published - Jan 2005

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
The authors would like to thank Jane W. Carey and Chenfei Ma for their assistance in data acquisition and illusion construction. The authors would also like to thank Dr. Steve Colburn, Dr. Brian C. J. Moore, and one anonymous reviewer for helpful critiques. This work was supported by the China Natural Science Foundation (No. 60172055, 69635020), the China National High-Tech R&D Project (863 Project, No. 2001AA114181), a grant from the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (No. 2002CCA01000), and a “985” grant from Peking University. It was also supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

Keywords

Chinese speech
Energetic masking
Informational masking
Nonsense sentences
Perceived spatial separation
Precedence effect

Access

10.1016/j.heares.2004.03.010

OpenUrl availability

Full text

Cite this

@article{6a9ab7992f1b447f962405bbd09e03f0,

title = "The effect of perceived spatial separation on informational masking of Chinese speech",

abstract = "The effect of perceived spatial separation, induced by the precedence effect, on release from noise or speech masking was investigated. Listeners were asked to orally repeat Chinese nonsense sentences, which were spoken by a female talker and presented by both the left (-45°) and right (+45°) loudspeakers, when maskers, which were either speech-spectrum noise sounds or Chinese nonsense sentences spoken by two other female talkers, were presented by the same two loudspeakers. Delays between identical sounds presented over the two loudspeakers were used to control the perceived locations of the target (right only) and masker (right, center, or left). The results show that perceived 45° and 90° separations of target speech from masking speech led to equivalently marked improvement in speech recognition, even though the degree of improvement was smaller than that reported in [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 106 (1999) 3578 (using English nonsense speech)]. When the masker was noise, however, perceived separation only marginally improved speech recognition. These results indicate that release from informational masking, due to perceived target/masker spatial separation induced by the precedence effect, also occurs for tonal Chinese speech. Compared to the 45° perceived within-hemifield separation, the 90° perceived cross-hemifield separation does not produce further unmasking.",

keywords = "Chinese speech, Energetic masking, Informational masking, Nonsense sentences, Perceived spatial separation, Precedence effect",

author = "Xihong Wu and Chun Wang and Jing Chen and Hongwei Qu and Wenrui Li and Yanhong Wu and Schneider, {Bruce A.} and Liang Li",

note = "Funding Information: The authors would like to thank Jane W. Carey and Chenfei Ma for their assistance in data acquisition and illusion construction. The authors would also like to thank Dr. Steve Colburn, Dr. Brian C. J. Moore, and one anonymous reviewer for helpful critiques. This work was supported by the China Natural Science Foundation (No. 60172055, 69635020), the China National High-Tech R&D Project (863 Project, No. 2001AA114181), a grant from the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (No. 2002CCA01000), and a “985” grant from Peking University. It was also supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.",

year = "2005",

month = jan,

doi = "10.1016/j.heares.2004.03.010",

language = "English (US)",

volume = "199",

pages = "1--10",

journal = "Hearing Research",

issn = "0378-5955",

publisher = "Elsevier",

number = "1-2",

}

TY - JOUR

T1 - The effect of perceived spatial separation on informational masking of Chinese speech

AU - Wu, Xihong

AU - Wang, Chun

AU - Chen, Jing

AU - Qu, Hongwei

AU - Li, Wenrui

AU - Wu, Yanhong

AU - Schneider, Bruce A.

AU - Li, Liang

N1 - Funding Information: The authors would like to thank Jane W. Carey and Chenfei Ma for their assistance in data acquisition and illusion construction. The authors would also like to thank Dr. Steve Colburn, Dr. Brian C. J. Moore, and one anonymous reviewer for helpful critiques. This work was supported by the China Natural Science Foundation (No. 60172055, 69635020), the China National High-Tech R&D Project (863 Project, No. 2001AA114181), a grant from the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (No. 2002CCA01000), and a “985” grant from Peking University. It was also supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

PY - 2005/1

Y1 - 2005/1

N2 - The effect of perceived spatial separation, induced by the precedence effect, on release from noise or speech masking was investigated. Listeners were asked to orally repeat Chinese nonsense sentences, which were spoken by a female talker and presented by both the left (-45°) and right (+45°) loudspeakers, when maskers, which were either speech-spectrum noise sounds or Chinese nonsense sentences spoken by two other female talkers, were presented by the same two loudspeakers. Delays between identical sounds presented over the two loudspeakers were used to control the perceived locations of the target (right only) and masker (right, center, or left). The results show that perceived 45° and 90° separations of target speech from masking speech led to equivalently marked improvement in speech recognition, even though the degree of improvement was smaller than that reported in [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 106 (1999) 3578 (using English nonsense speech)]. When the masker was noise, however, perceived separation only marginally improved speech recognition. These results indicate that release from informational masking, due to perceived target/masker spatial separation induced by the precedence effect, also occurs for tonal Chinese speech. Compared to the 45° perceived within-hemifield separation, the 90° perceived cross-hemifield separation does not produce further unmasking.

AB - The effect of perceived spatial separation, induced by the precedence effect, on release from noise or speech masking was investigated. Listeners were asked to orally repeat Chinese nonsense sentences, which were spoken by a female talker and presented by both the left (-45°) and right (+45°) loudspeakers, when maskers, which were either speech-spectrum noise sounds or Chinese nonsense sentences spoken by two other female talkers, were presented by the same two loudspeakers. Delays between identical sounds presented over the two loudspeakers were used to control the perceived locations of the target (right only) and masker (right, center, or left). The results show that perceived 45° and 90° separations of target speech from masking speech led to equivalently marked improvement in speech recognition, even though the degree of improvement was smaller than that reported in [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 106 (1999) 3578 (using English nonsense speech)]. When the masker was noise, however, perceived separation only marginally improved speech recognition. These results indicate that release from informational masking, due to perceived target/masker spatial separation induced by the precedence effect, also occurs for tonal Chinese speech. Compared to the 45° perceived within-hemifield separation, the 90° perceived cross-hemifield separation does not produce further unmasking.

KW - Chinese speech

KW - Energetic masking

KW - Informational masking

KW - Nonsense sentences

KW - Perceived spatial separation

KW - Precedence effect

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=9644279698&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=9644279698&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1016/j.heares.2004.03.010

DO - 10.1016/j.heares.2004.03.010

M3 - Article

C2 - 15574295

AN - SCOPUS:9644279698

SN - 0378-5955

VL - 199

SP - 1

EP - 10

JO - Hearing Research

JF - Hearing Research

IS - 1-2

ER -

The effect of perceived spatial separation on informational masking of Chinese speech

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

Access

OpenUrl availability

Other files and links

Fingerprint

Cite this