Real-time lexical competitions during speech-in-speech comprehension

This study investigates speech comprehension in competing multi-talker babble. We examined the effects of number of simultaneous talkers and of frequency of words in the babble on lexical decision to target words. Results revealed better performance at a low talker number (n = 2). Importantly, frequency of words in the babble significantly affected performance: high frequency word babble interfered more strongly with word recognition than low frequency babble. This informational masking was particularly salient for the 2talker babble. These findings suggest that investigating speech-in-speech comprehension may provide crucial information on lexical competition processes that occur in real-time during word recognition.

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: SPEECH
• Authors: Véronique Boulenger, Michel Hoen, Emmanuel Ferragne, François Pellegrino, Fanny Meunier
• Keywords: Babble, Frequency Word Babble, SPEECH 2010, Word Recognition