Abstract
The ability to distinguish among different types of sounds in the environment and to identify sound sources is a fundamental skill of the auditory system. This study tested responses to sounds by stimulus category (speech, music, and environmental) in adults with normal hearing to determine under what task conditions there was a processing advantage for speech. We hypothesized that speech sounds would be processed faster and more accurately than non-speech sounds under specific listening conditions and different behavioral goals. Thus, we used three different task conditions allowing us to compare detection and identification of sound categories in an auditory oddball paradigm and in a repetition-switch category paradigm. We found that response time and accuracy were modulated by the specific task demands. The sound category itself had no effect on sound detection outcomes but had a pronounced effect on sound identification. Faster and more accurate responses to speech were found only when identifying sounds. We demonstrate a speech processing “advantage” when identifying the sound category among non-categorical sounds and when detecting and identifying among categorical sounds. Thus, overall, our results are consistent with a theory of speech processing that relies on specialized systems distinct from music and other environmental sounds.
Highlights
How we extract meaningful information from the auditory signal is still not fully understood
reaction time (RT) did not differ by category when pressing for any detected novel sound (Table 1 and Figure 3A, white bars), whereas response times were fastest to speech when identifying the novel sounds (Table 2 and Figure 3A, black bars)
There was an interaction between task condition and stimulus category
Summary
How we extract meaningful information from the auditory signal is still not fully understood. An important auditory skill is the ability to distinguish among the different types of sounds in the environment and to identify sound sources such as a car honking, a person talking, or music playing. Classifying an auditory object involves distinguishing the various characteristics of the sound, such as its pitch, envelope, and rhythm. The listener may not recognize a specific object from which sound emanates (e.g., flute or person) but may still be able to classify the category of sound it belongs to (e.g., music or speech). Previous studies have confirmed that sound categories can be readily differentiated from each other with only limited information (e.g., with only 20–50 ms sound duration) (Murray et al, 2006; Bigand et al, 2011; Agus et al, 2012; Suied et al, 2014; Ogg et al, 2017), but there is some controversy as to whether processes used to identify speech sounds differ from those used to identify other environmental sounds (Murray et al, 2006; Bigand et al, 2011; Agus et al, 2012).
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