Nonmonotonicity of informational masking

Oh, Eunmi; Lutfi, Robert A.

doi:10.1121/1.423932

Cited by 72 publications

(113 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…They proposed that this result could be explained by the fact that the subjects with hearing loss needed to listen at such high signal-to-noise ratios that the masker and target speech were easy to differentiate (i.e., simply listening for the louder target message reduced informational masking). Alternatively, Arbogast, et al also suggested that there may be an inverse relationship between the amount of energetic masking and the amount of informational masking, as has been shown in tonal informational masking tasks (e.g., Kidd, Mason, Brughera, & Chiu, 2003;Neff & Green, 1987;Oh & Lutfi, 1998). The results of Hornsby, Ricketts, and Johnson (2006) indicated that normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners yield similar amounts of increased masking when performance with a speech masker is compared to that obtained with speech-modulated noise.…”

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confidence: 93%

“…Arbogast, et al (2005) found less informational masking in a group of listeners with hearing loss varying in age from 21 years to 79 years, as compared to age-matched normal-hearing participants. They proposed that this result could be explained by the fact that the subjects with hearing loss needed to listen at such high signal-to-noise ratios that the masker and target speech were easy to differentiate (i.e., simply listening for the louder target message reduced informational masking Mason, Brughera, & Chiu, 2003;Neff & Green, 1987;Oh & Lutfi, 1998). The results of Hornsby, Ricketts, and Johnson (2006) indicated that normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners yield similar amounts of increased masking when performance with a speech masker is compared to that obtained with speech-modulated noise.…”

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Aging and Speech-on-Speech Masking

2008

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Objectives-A common complaint of many older adults is difficulty communicating in situations where they must focus on one talker in the presence of other people speaking. In listening environments containing multiple talkers, age-related changes may be caused by increased sensitivity to energetic masking, increased susceptibility to informational masking (e.g., confusion between the target voice and masking voices), and/or cognitive deficits. The purpose of the present study was to tease out these contributions to the difficulties that older adults experience in speech-on-speech masking situations.Design-Groups of younger, normal-hearing individuals and older adults with varying degrees of hearing sensitivity (n = 12 per group) participated in a study of sentence recognition in the presence of four types of maskers: a two-talker masker consisting of voices of the same sex as the target voice, a two-talker masker of voices of the opposite sex as the target, a signal-envelope-modulated noise derived from the two-talker complex, and a speech-shaped steady noise. Subjects also completed a voice discrimination task to determine the extent to which they were able to incidentally learn to tell apart the target voice from the same-sex masking voices and to examine whether this ability influenced speech-on-speech masking.Results-Results showed that older adults had significantly poorer performance in the presence of all four types of maskers, with the largest absolute difference for the same-sex masking condition. When the data were analyzed in terms of relative group differences (i.e., adjusting for absolute performance) the greatest effect was found for the opposite-sex masker. Degree of hearing loss was significantly related to performance in several listening conditions. Some older subjects demonstrated a reduced ability to discriminate between the masking and target voices; performance on this task was not related to speech recognition ability.Conclusions-The overall pattern of results suggests that although amount of informational masking does not seem to differ between older and younger listeners, older adults (particularly those with hearing loss) evidence a deficit in the ability to selectively attend to a target voice, even when the masking voices are from talkers of the opposite sex. Possible explanations for these findings include problems understanding speech in the presence of a masker with temporal and spectral fluctuations and/or age-related changes in cognitive function.The primary auditory complaint of many older people is difficulty understanding speech in noisy situations. Numerous studies have documented this age-related decline in the ability to comprehend speech in the presence of a masker (e.g., Dubno, Dirks, & Shaefer, 1987;Plomp & Mimpen 1979). This research has demonstrated that older adults with presbycusis generally have greater difficulty understanding masked speech than do young, normal-hearing individuals. Although a portion of this problem is because of the filtering and distortio...

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Aging and Speech-on-Speech Masking

2008

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“…The elevations in threshold can be quite large. When masker uncertainty is introduced by varying the frequencies and levels of masker components at random on each presentation, the amount of informational masking of a puretone signal can be as much as 50 dB for well-trained adult listeners (Neff & Callaghan, 1987, 1988Neff & Green, 1987;Oh & Lutfi, 1998). For preschool-age children performing in very similar conditions it can be in excess of 70 dB (Oh, Wightman, & Lutfi, 2001).…”

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One factor underlies individual differences in auditory informational masking within and across age groups

Lutfi

Kistler

et al. 2003

Perception & Psychophysics

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Masked threshold for a pure-tone signal can be substantially elevated whenever the listener is uncertain about the spectral or temporal properties of the masker, an effect referred to as auditory informational masking. Individual differences in the effect are large, with young children being most susceptible. When masker uncertainty is introduced by randomizing the frequencies of a multitone masker on each presentation, the function relating a child's pure-tone signal threshold to the number of masker components is found to be substantially elevated above that of most adults. The age effect and the individual differences among adults are not well understood, though a difference in the shapes of the masking functions suggests that different detection strategies may be involved. The present study reports results from a principal components analysis of informational masking functions obtained from 38 normal-hearing children ranging in age from 4 to 16 years and 46 normal-hearing adults ranging in age from 19 to 38 years. The premise underlying the analysis is that if different detection strategies are involved, they should add independent sources of variance to the masking functions. Hence, more than one principal component (PC) should be required to account for a substantial proportion of the variance in these functions. The results, instead, supported the operation of a single underlying strategy with all but 17% of the variance accounted for by the first PC within and across age groups. An analysis of variance on the first two PCs showed that only the first changed with age, and a cluster analysis of the masking functions showed complete separation of clusters along this PC for all but 1 listener. The results are taken to suggest that large individual differences in informational masking at all ages reflect differences in the extent to which masker uncertainty adds variance to the decision variable of an otherwise optimal decision strategy.

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“…Like many modern studies of masking (e.g., Kidd, Mason, Deliwala, Woods, & Colburn, 1994;Neff & Dethlefs, 1995;Oh & Lutfi, 1998), Experiment 1 used an adaptive procedure to directly estimate thresholds corresponding to p .69. Adaptive procedures efficiently provide direct estimates of thresholds and, thus, the magnitude of masking in physical terms that are easily understood.…”

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confidence: 99%