Effect of talker sex on sentence discrimination scores

Abstract

The effects of talkers' sex on sentence discrimination scores of normal hearing listeners were examined. Two talkers each recorded ten synthetic sentences and a competing story. From this, four talker-masker combinations were prepared: male talker, male masker; male talker, female masker; female talker, female masker; female talker, male masker. Each combination was presented with the talker and masker in the same ear and in one ear only. Three different message-to-competition ratios (+ 10, 0, −10 dB) were used to present the four talker-masker combinations to 16 listeners. At each level, the talkers' sentence stimuli remained fixed at 60 dB SPL while the competing story was varied from 50 to 70 dB. Statistical analyses of the results indicated that significant differences in discrimination were produced by the message-to-competition ratios, the talker-masker combinations, and the interaction between them. Implications of these differences are discussed in the context of these results.