Effects of speaker and listener sex on auditory attention decoding performance.

Objectives: Auditory Attention Decoding (AAD) is a technique utilizing brain signals to decode on which sound the listener focuses the attention. In most current studies, the effect of type of speech materials used and sex of the listener is not considered. We investigated the effect on AAD performance of factors related to the speaker (such as the sex of the speaker, background noise level, and same versus mixed-sex conditions) and the listener (sex of the listener).

Design: Forty-two young adults with normal hearing participated in the study. They listened to 2 competing speakers and were instructed to attend to one speaker and ignore the other speaker, whilst electroencephalography (EEG) and electrooculography (EOG) were measured. Background noise was introduced in half of the conditions. AAD performance was compared across eight experimental conditions.

Results: A significant main effect of speaker sex was found: A male target and/or male masker speaker resulted in higher AAD performance compared to a female speaker with a higher fundamental frequency (F0). These effects were found to be small and therefore likely clinically irrelevant.

Conclusion: While no substantial effects were found on the factors investigated in this study, including diverse and realistic training scenarios remains a valuable approach to prevent potential influences from other factors.