Talker identity causes more perceptual variation in consonant perception than noise waveform shifts

Evidence

Consonant-vowel combinations (CVs) were presented to normal-hearing listeners in white noise at six different signal-to-noise ratios. The obtained responses were analyzed with respect to the considered sources of variability using a measure of the perceptual distance between responses. The largest effect was found across different CVs. For stimuli of the same phonetic identity, the speech-induced variability across and within talkers and the across-listener variability were substantial and of similar magnitude. — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 5572

The observed perceptual variability across talkers is well established in the related literature (e.g., Phatak et al. 2008 ); the equally large variability within talkers had not yet been demonstrated. Most remarkably, even a 100-ms time shift in the white masking-noise waveform induced significant perceptual variability, indicating that “steady-state” masking noise should not be considered steady over time in the context of consonant cues. On the receiver side, different NH listeners with identical language background showed substantial differences while individual listeners could fairly reliably reproduce their responses. Averaging consonant perception data (even across NH listeners) thus seems problematic. — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 5622

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: ‘your accent is as hard to parse as someone else’s ear’ — the surprising symmetry between speaker-side and listener-side variability in speech perception.
• QUESTION: What does ‘steady-state’ masking noise being non-steady imply for all classic masking experiments that assume stationarity?
• corroborated: 4 independent passages support this claim — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 5572; Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 5622
• XREF: connects to: Sound-source differences dominate consonant perception variability more than listener uncertainty — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 5579; Consonant confusions shift with noise type, filtering, and vowel context. — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 5577; Time-shifting an identical noise masker changes consonant perception measurably.