Contextual effects on the perception of temporal cues in speech appear unchanged by noise.

Abstract

This study examined how energetic masking and informational masking influence the interaction between acoustic and lexical-semantic cues in speech recognition. Younger to middle-aged adults completed an online phonemic categorization task using a dent-tent continuum varying in voice-onset time (VOT), embedded in dent-biasing, tent-biasing, or neutral sentence contexts. Sentences were presented in quiet, speech-shaped noise or two-talker babble. Lexical-semantic context consistently biased VOT perception toward the contextual cue, independent of noise condition. Speech-shaped noise degraded VOT perception relative to quiet and two-talker babble. These findings indicate that linguistic context and acoustic interference may exert largely independent influences on temporal cue perception.