On learning to recognize spectrally reduced speech: I. The effects of multiple repetitions

Abstract

In a previous study [Chiu et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 109, 2501 (2001)], normal listerers learned open-set recognition of words in Harvard IEEE sentences that were spectrally reduced to 4 channels using the CIS processing strategy [Shannon et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 104, 2467–2476 (1998)]. Half of the listeners listened to a male talker during training, the other half a female talker. At different points in the training listeners were tested with blocks of IEEE sentences spoken by the familiar talker, blocks of IEEE sentences by the novel talker, blocks of IEEE sentences of the 2 talkers randomly intermixed, and blocks of HINT sentences. In that study, listeners could listen to each sentence during early training for an unrestricted number of times before they were given feedback. In the current study, listeners were allowed to listen to each sentence only once during training before feedback was given. Preliminary data obtained from the current study were largely comparable to those obtained in the previous study. The results suggest that massed repetitions and drills, at least in the context of our experimental conditions, wa have minimal effect on learning to recognize spectrally reduced speech. [Work supported by URC, Univ. of Cincinnati.]