Abstract
Listeners often experience challenges understanding a person (target) in the presence of competing talkers (maskers). This difficulty reduces with the availability of visual speech information (VSI; lip movements, degree of mouth opening) and during linguistic release from masking (LRM; masking decreases with dissimilar language maskers). We investigate whether and how LRM occurs with VSI. We presented English targets with either Dutch or English maskers in audio-only and audiovisual conditions to 62 American English participants. The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) was easy at 0 audio-only and -8 dB audiovisual in Experiment 1 and hard at -8 and -16 dB in Experiment 2 to assess the effects of modality on LRM across the same and different SNRs. We found LRM in the audiovisual condition for all SNRs and in audio-only for -8 dB, demonstrating reliable LRM for audiovisual conditions. Results also revealed that LRM is modulated by modality with larger LRM in audio-only indicating that introducing VSI weakens LRM. Furthermore, participants showed higher performance for Dutch maskers compared to English maskers with and without VSI. This establishes that listeners use both VSI and dissimilar language maskers to overcome masking. Our study shows that LRM persists in the audiovisual modality and its strength depends on the modality.
Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
