Relating monaural and binaural envelope processing abilities to spatial release from masking

Abstract

The difference in speech identification thresholds between colocated condition (when the target and the maskers are placed at the same location) and spatially separated condition (when target and the maskers are symmetrically separated) is quantified as Spatial Release from Masking (SRM). SRM is thought to be a combination of monaural and binaural advantages arising from spatially separating the target from the maskers. Monaural contributions are from the head shadow effect whereas the binaural contributions are from processing the interaural differences between the two ears. However, the exact contributions of the monaural and binaural advantage to SRM is unknown. Here, we present data on monaural and binaural envelope processing abilities and their relationship to SRM on a large cohort of young normal hearing listeners. Monaural envelope processing ability was measured using the envelope regularity discrimination task (Moore et al., 2019). Sensitivity to ITD-envelopes was used to quantify binaural envelope processing ability. SRM was measured using coordinate response measure sentences. The relationship between SRM, envelope regularity index, and ITD thresholds along with the monaural and binaural envelope processing abilities to SRM will be discussed.