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Processing multi-talker speech in a tone language: Dumplings interfere with sleep at a cocktail party
Xianhui Wang1, Chao-Yang Lee2, Yu Zhang3
1School of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, San Diego State University, San Diego, California 92182, USA.
None:
How the dual function of fundamental frequency (F0)-talker separation and word distinction-affects Mandarin word recognition in a cocktail party scenario is investigated. A robust benefit of talker F0 separation is observed: Target recognition was more accurate with different-sex talkers (85%) than same-sex talkers (48%). The effect of word-F0 was modulated by lexical status: Real-word tonal minimal pairs lowered accuracy relative to the baseline (average 4% decrease), whereas nonword tonal minimal pairs did not compromise performance. Thus, tone language listeners leverage talker-F0 differences just as non-tone language listeners do, but the advantage is constrained by the lexical role of F0.
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