Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 1, 2026

Ultrasound Images of the Tongue: A Tutorial for Assessment and Remediation of Speech Sound Errors
Published on: January 3, 2017
Phonemic restoration effect reversed in a reverberant room
Nirmal Kumar Srinivasan1, Pavel Zahorik
1Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky 40292, USA. nirmal.srinivasan@louisville.edu
Abstract:
Classic demonstrations of the phonemic restoration effect show increased intelligibility of interrupted speech when the interruptions are caused by a plausible masking sound rather than by silent periods. Previous studies of this effect have been conducted exclusively under anechoic or nearly anechoic listening conditions. This study demonstrates that the effect is reversed when sounds are presented in a realistically simulated reverberant room (broadband T(60) = 1.1 s): intelligibility is greater for silent interruptions than for interruptions by unmodulated noise. Additional results suggest that the reversal is primarily due to filling silent intervals with reverberant energy from the speech signal.
Related Concept Videos
Sound Waves: Interference
Sound Waves: Resonance
Echo
Imagine the sound is reflected back to the ears. Assuming that the source is very close to the human, the difference between hearing the two sounds—the emitted sound and the reflected sound—may be more than the minimum time for perceiving distinct sounds. If this is the case,...
Effects of feedback
Feedback significantly modifies the gain of a control system. The gain of a system without feedback is altered by a factor of one plus GH, where G represents...
Auditory Perception
Interference and Decay
Interference occurs when competing memories hinder the retrieval of particular information. It can be classified into two types: proactive and retroactive interference. Proactive...

