Multi-talker background and semantic priming effect

Abstract

The reported studies have aimed to investigate whether informational masking in a multi-talker background relies on semantic interference between the background and target using an adapted semantic priming paradigm. In 3 experiments, participants were required to perform a lexical decision task on a target item embedded in backgrounds composed of 1–4 voices. These voices were Semantically Consistent (SC) voices (i.e., pronouncing words sharing semantic features with the target) or Semantically Inconsistent (SI) voices (i.e., pronouncing words semantically unrelated to each other and to the target). In the first experiment, backgrounds consisted of 1 or 2 SC voices. One and 2 SI voices were added in Experiments 2 and 3, respectively. The results showed a semantic priming effect only in the conditions where the number of SC voices was greater than the number of SI voices, suggesting that semantic priming depended on prime intelligibility and strategic processes. However, even if backgrounds were composed of 3 or 4 voices, reducing intelligibility, participants were able to recognize words from these backgrounds, although no semantic priming effect on the targets was observed. Overall this finding suggests that informational masking can occur at a semantic level if intelligibility is sufficient. Based on the Effortfulness Hypothesis, we also suggest that when there is an increased difficulty in extracting target signals (caused by a relatively high number of voices in the background), more cognitive resources were allocated to formal processes (i.e., acoustic and phonological), leading to a decrease in available resources for deeper semantic processing of background words, therefore preventing semantic priming from occurring.

Vocal and semantic cues for the segregation of long concurrent speech stimuli in diotic and dichotic listening—The Long-SWoRD test

“…The advantage of a large distance between voices over a small distance is also in accordance with previous studies (Bas ¸kent and Gaudrain, 2016;Darwin et al, 2003;Ives et al, 2010;Vestergaard et al, 2009). In addition, we found that the participants can also benefit from the semantic information, which is also consistent with the results of previous studies (Aydelott and Bates, 2004;Clarke et al, 2014;Dekerle et al, 2014;Freyman et al, 2001;Helfer and Freyman, 2009;Hoen et al, 2007;Iyer et al, 2010). However, here we showed that this effect is limited to conditions where the voice differences are large enough to let the listeners access the semantic context of the target story.…”

Do we parse the background into separate streams in the cocktail party?

“…In a recent study, attended and ignored speech streams were both represented in the auditory cortex (mostly in primary areas), suggesting the global representation of the full auditory scene with all auditory streams (Puvvada & Simon, 2017). Other studies also confirmed the recognition of some words from a background speech stream, even if the background consisted of multiple voices (Dekerle et al, 2014). Furthermore, signs of spectro-temporal and linguistic processing of task-irrelevant speech streams were found in the auditory cortex, left inferior cortex, and posterior parietal cortex (Brodbeck et al, 2020;Har-shai Yahav & Zion Golumbic, 2021).…”

Autonomic Nervous System Responses During Perception of Masked Speech may Reflect Constructs other than Subjective Listening Effort

“…For example, speech masked by two-talker babble not only presents listeners with the challenge of dealing with a partially obscured target speech signal, it also imposes greater demands on selective attention as listeners must choose to which of the three voices to attend ( Freyman et al, 2004 ; Brungart et al, 2006 ; Ihlefeld and Shinn-Cunningham, 2008 ; Shinn-Cunningham, 2008 ). In addition, demands on working memory likely increase, as listeners probably retain some of the content of the masking signal in working memory and this must subsequently be selectively inhibited at the lexical level ( Tun et al, 2002 ; Van Engen and Bradlow, 2007 ; Cooke et al, 2008 ; Mattys et al, 2009 ; Dekerle et al, 2014 ). Neuropsychological and genetic studies further suggest that populations that are predisposed to show poorer selective attention, as indexed either by increased degree of depressive symptoms ( Chandrasekaran et al, 2015 ) or genetic markers associated with poorer executive function ( Xie et al, 2015 ) experience greater interference in conditions that emphasize informational masking as compared to those involving primarily energetic masking.…”