Performance on stochastic figure-ground perception varies with individual differences in speech-in-noise recognition and working memory capacity

Abstract

Understanding speech in noisy environments can be challenging and requires listeners to accurately segregate a target speaker from irrelevant background noise. An online SFG task with complex stimuli consisting of a sequence of inharmonic pure-tone chords was administered to 37 young, normal hearing adults, to have a more pure measure of auditory stream segregation that does not rely on linguistic stimuli. Detection of target figure chords consisting of 4, 6, 8, or 10 temporally coherent tones amongst a background of randomly varying tones was measured. Increased temporal coherence (i.e., number of tones in a figure chord) resulted in higher accuracy and faster reaction times (RTs). At higher coherence levels, faster RTs were associated with better scores on a standardized speech-in-noise recognition task. Increased working memory capacity hindered SFG accuracy as the tasked progressed, whereas self-reported musicianship modulated the relationship between speech-in-noise recognition and SFG accuracy. Overall, results demonstrate that the SFG task could serve as an assessment of auditory stream segregation that is sensitive to capture individual differences in working memory capacity and musicianship.