Abstract
Musicians appear to have an enhanced ability to perceive speech-in-noise, prompting suggestions that musical training could be used to help people who struggle to communicate in noisy environments. This study assessed the role of sensitivity to beat, rhythm, and melody in supporting speech-in-noise perception. This is an exploratory study based on correlation. The study included 24 normally hearing young adult participants with a wide range of musical training and experience. Formal and informal musical experience was measured with the training subscale of the Goldsmiths' Musical Sophistication Index. Speech reception thresholds (SRT) were measured using the Matrix Sentence Test and three different speech-spectrum-shaped noise maskers: unmodulated and sinusoidally amplitude-modulated (modulation frequency, fm = 8 Hz; modulation depths: 60 and 80%). Primary predictors were measures of sensitivity to beat, rhythm, and melody. Secondary predictors were pure-tone frequency discrimination and auditory working memory (digit span). Any contributions from these two predictors were to be controlled for as appropriate. Participants with more musical experience and greater sensitivity to rhythm, beat, and melody had better SRTs. Sensitivity to beat was more strongly linked with SRT than sensitivity to either rhythm or melody. This relationship remained strong even after factoring out contributions from frequency discrimination and auditory working memory. Sensitivity to beat predicted SRTs in unmodulated and modulated noise. We propose that this sensitivity maximizes benefit from fluctuations in signal-to-noise ratio through temporal orienting of attention to perceptually salient parts of the signal. Beat perception may be a good candidate for targeted training aimed at enhancing speech perception when listening in noise.
Highlights
Everyday communication involves perceiving and understanding speech that is often variably masked by some form of background noise
The 80% modulation depth masker resulted in the largest intersubject standard deviation, suggesting this masker was more sensitive to individual differences in speechin-noise perception than the other two
Causation cannot be inferred from a correlation analysis, the pattern of associations observed here could provide insight into the link between musical training and speechin-noise perception
Summary
Everyday communication involves perceiving and understanding speech that is often variably masked by some form of background noise. This potentially impacts the listener’s sense of achievement, and task compliance, even in highly motivated adults, can be rather low (Sweetow & Sabes 2010), perhaps contributing to the limited success of the programs (Saunders et al 2016). It has, been suggested that musical training could provide a valuable adjunct to these more standard approaches to auditory habilitation, since numerous studies have demonstrated a relationship between musical training and better speech-in-noise perception (e.g., ParberyClark et al 2009b, 2011a; Swaminathan et al 2015). More likely to comply with long periods of training (Patel 2011; Slater & Kraus 2016)
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