Binaural release of masking acts on spectro-temporal units, not frequency channels
Evidence
Whereas Levitt and Rabiner ( 1967 ) proposed their model for speech in stationary noise, we are interested in speech interferers. Since speech shows strong modulations both in time and frequency, the level of the interferer will vary. We will therefore consider BMLD effects at the level of spectro-temporal regions rather than frequency channels. Thus we extend the original hypothesis and postulate that a BMLD effect might take place at the level of individual spectro-temporal units and that this detection advantage would be responsible for the spatially improved speech intelligibility. — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 1623
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- DEFINE: Extends the BMLD concept beyond stationary tone detection to modulated speech, at the spectro-temporal level — a significant scope expansion.
Related
- For speech interferers, BMLD unmasking acts within spectro-temporal units rather than frequency bands (similarity 0.92)
- Binaural masking release is modeled as within-band noise floor reduction (similarity 0.92)
- BMLD detection advantages may operate at spectro-temporal unit level, not just per frequency band. (similarity 0.90)
- Binaural detection advantages act on small spectro-temporal units, not whole frequency bands (similarity 0.90)
- Binaural advantage is modeled as a within-band noise-floor reduction improving SNR (similarity 0.88)
- Binaural detection benefits are modeled as noise-floor reduction in each frequency band. (similarity 0.88)
- Spatial release from masking persists even when target speech components are selectively discarded (similarity 0.86)
- Spatially separated speech sources improve intelligibility through binaural release from masking. (similarity 0.85)
- Spatial release of masking survives when only loud, monaurally detectable speech remains. (similarity 0.85)
- Binaural unmasking depends on masker duration but not signal duration (similarity 0.85)
- Spatially separated sources reveal speech components audible only via binaural processing (similarity 0.85)
- Speech elements near masked threshold carry intelligibility only under binaural listening. (similarity 0.84)
- Binaural unmasking cannot explain spatial release from masking in multispeaker situations (similarity 0.83)
- Reduced BMLD stems from masking effects, not from signal frequency or masker level (similarity 0.82)
- Binaural masking release can be tested under non-simultaneous masking conditions (similarity 0.82)