Navin Viswanathan, Thesis Supervisor Carol Anne Miller, Thesis Honors Advisor
Keywords:
speech perception speech processing linguistic release from masking known voice effect background noise cognitive psychology
Abstract:
Previous studies have shown that recall accuracy improves when words are repeatedly spoken by
a “known voice”. It has also been found that listeners recognize speech better when the background
babble is in a different language than the target speech. Using an exposure-test design, an evaluation was
conducted to see if these effects interact. During exposure, English words embedded in English or Dutch
background babble were presented to monolingual English listeners. During test, words from the
exposure phase were repeated (old) or not repeated (new). Participants’ task is to recognize words as
“old” or “new” as quickly as possible. Results include interactive effects of known voices and different
maskers such that the same speaker and a target-masker mismatch yields better performance (higher
accuracy and faster response times)
