Checkerboard speech vs interrupted speech: Effects of spectrotemporal segmentation on intelligibility

The intelligibility of interrupted speech (interrupted over time) and checkerboard speech (interrupted over time-by-frequency), both of which retained a half of the original speech, was examined. The intelligibility of interrupted speech stimuli decreased as segment duration increased. 20-band checkerboard speech stimuli brought nearly 100% intelligibility irrespective of segment duration, whereas, with 2 and 4 frequency bands, a trough of 35%-40% appeared at the 160-ms segment duration. Mosaic speech stimuli (power was averaged over a time-frequency unit) yielded generally poor intelligibility ( ⩽10%). The results revealed the limitations of underlying auditory organization for speech cues scattered in a time-frequency domain.