The Effect of Sound Localization on Auditory-Only and Audiovisual Speech Recognition in a Simulated Multitalker...

Area of Science:

• Auditory perception
• Human-computer interaction
• Speech processing

Background:

• Sound-source spatial location offers benefits like talker separation and visual speech cue acquisition.
• These benefits are usually studied independently.
• The interaction of spatial hearing benefits in multitalker settings is not well understood.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the interaction of spatial hearing benefits in multitalker environments.
• To examine how sound-localization degradation (LocDeg) affects auditory-only and auditory-visual speech recognition.
• To determine the additive nature of auditory and visual speech cues.

Main Methods:

• Normal-hearing adults performed sentence recognition tasks under auditory-only and auditory-visual conditions.
• Target speech and masking sounds were presented from loudspeakers at various azimuths.
• A real-time sound-localization degradation (LocDeg) algorithm was employed.

Main Results:

• LocDeg reduced target orientation accuracy in co-located conditions, diminishing auditory-visual benefit.
• In multitalker settings, auditory spatial separation and visual orientation benefits were additive.
• Both auditory and visual benefits were diminished by the LocDeg algorithm.

Conclusions:

• Sound localization plays a vital role in everyday communication.
• Auditory spatial cues and visual cues for speech perception are additive.
• Degradation of sound localization significantly impacts speech intelligibility in multitalker environments.