The influence of multiple narrators on adults’ listening comprehension

Abstract

Research has demonstrated that variable, talker information—such as the number of talkers—affects listeners’ perception and processing of linguistic information during various laboratory tasks. In particular, the detrimental effects of multiple talkers are highlighted during online speech perception tasks with little contextual support [isolated word recognition; e.g., Mullennix et al. (1989), Ryalls and Pisoni (1997), Sommers and Barcroft (2011)]. Nonetheless, it is unclear how multiple talkers might affect listeners’ perception of linguistic information in more complex spoken language tasks utilizing real-time, fluent speech. The present experiments were conducted determine if information contributed by multiple talkers influences adults’ auditory story comprehension in the presence of both quiet and background noise. The accuracy and reaction time data did not support the hypothesis that talker information affects the perception of linguistic information during auditory story comprehension. Thus these data bring to light theoretical perspectives that emphasize the importance of looking across experimental tasks to better understand talker-specific information’s pattern of influence on spoken language processing [e.g., Sommers and Barcroft (2006), Werker and Curtin (2005)].