Effort from degraded speech accumulates across sequential words, straining working memory

Evidence

Mapping of degraded speech to mental representations is more effortful due the mismatch between the actual signal and its mental representation, and lexical context is not able to release listeners from this effort on time. In natural situations, in which words are being heard in succession, and the speech signal evolves quickly over time, such a difference in processing speed of degraded speech will accumulate effort, and draw more strongly on resources in working memory. — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 3953