Revealing Perceptional and Cognitive Mechanisms in Static and Dynamic Cocktail Party Listening by Means of Error Analyses

Abstract

In cocktail party situations multiple talkers speak simultaneously, which causes listening to be perceptually and cognitively challenging. Such situations can either be static (fixed target talker) or dynamic, meaning the target talker switches occasionally and in a potentially unpredictable way. To shed light on the perceptional and cognitive mechanisms in static and dynamic cocktail party situations, we conducted an analysis of error types that occur during a multi-talker speech recognition test. The error analysis distinguished between misunderstood or omitted words (random errors) and target-masker confusions. To investigate the effects of aging and hearing impairment, we compared data from three listener groups, comprised of young as well as older adults with and without hearing loss. In the static condition, error rates were generally very low, except for the older hearing-impaired listeners. Consistent with the assumption of decreased audibility, they showed a notable amount of random errors. In the dynamic condition, errors increased compared to the static condition, especially immediately following a target talker switch. Those increases were similar for random and confusion errors. The older hearing-impaired listeners showed greater difficulties than the younger adults in trials not preceded by a switch. These results suggest that the load associated with dynamic cocktail party listening affects the ability to focus attention on the talker of interest and the retrieval of words from short-term memory, as indicated by the increased amount of confusion and random errors. This was most pronounced in the older hearing-impaired listeners proposing an interplay of perceptual and cognitive mechanisms.

The Right-Ear Advantage in Static and Dynamic Cocktail-Party Situations

“…Therefore, dynamic situations are associated with a higher cognitive load than static situations. Wächtler et al (2020) observed a more pronounced REA in dynamic relative to static situations. Moreover, in dynamic situations with permanent switches (and therefore a high cognitive demand), the REA tended to be higher compared to when switches were rare.…”

“…There is some evidence that the REA can also be observed in sound fields ( Fumero et al, 2022 ; Hublet et al, 1976 ; Meister et al, 2020 ; Wächtler et al, 2020 ). Still, it is possible that the reduced binaural separation caused the REA to become smaller than in the classic dichotic listening paradigm, as the language advantage of the left hemisphere can be expected to show its greatest effect on the REA when signals from the left and right are perfectly separated.…”

“…An a priori calculation of the necessary sample size was performed using G*Power 3.1.9.2 ( Faul et al, 2009 ) with a significance level of 5% and a power threshold of 80%, based on the data of the static and dynamic situations observed for normal-hearing listeners in the Meister et al (2020) study, as reported by Wächtler et al (2020) . An effect size of 0.79 was calculated, resulting in a minimum sample size of 12 participants and yielding an actual power of 0.82.…”

“… Wächtler et al (2020) conducted additional analyses using the data from Meister et al (2020) and compared the REA between static and dynamic cocktail-party situations. In static cocktail-party situations, the target talker remains the same and is known to the listener in advance, whereas in dynamic situations the target talker switches in an unpredictable manner, that is, uncued and in pseudo-random patterns.…”

“…Errors during speech recognition in multi-talker situations can be divided into two categories, namely misunderstanding or completely omitting utterances (random errors) and confusing utterances from target and masker (confusion errors) (cf. Lin & Carlile, 2015 ; Wächtler et al, 2022 ). Due to the dominance of the left hemisphere for speech recognition and the consequential advantage for right-ear input (cf.…”