Testing differential effects of periodicity and predictability in auditory rhythmic cueing of concurrent speech

Perceptual entrainment and temporal prediction aid speech perception in both quiet and noisy environments. Isochronous, periodic auditory rhythmic cues facilitate neural entrainment and temporal expectations which can benefit encoding and perception of target speech. However, most studies using isochronous cues confound periodicity with predictability. To this end, we characterized how systematic changes in the acoustic dimensions of stimulus rate, target phase, periodicity, and predictably of an entraining sound precursor impact the subsequent identification of concurrent speech targets. Target concurrent vowel pairs were preceded by rhythmic woodblock cues which were either periodic-predictable (PP, isochronous rhythm), aperiodic-predictable (AP, accelerating rhythm), or aperiodic-unpredictable (AU, random rhythm). The number of pulses per rhythm was roved to further manipulate predictability. Stimuli also varied in presentation rate (2.5, 4.5, 6.5 Hz) and target speech phase (in-phase, 0°; out-of-phase, -90°, 180°) relative to the preceding entraining rhythm. We also measured participants' musical pulse continuation and standardized speech-in-noise perception abilities. We did not observe any effects of stimulus rhythm, rate, or target phase on target speech identification accuracy. However, reaction times were slowest at the nominal speech rate (4.5 Hz) and were most disrupted by out-of-phase presentations following the PP rhythm. Double-vowel task performance was associated with stronger musical pulse continuation abilities, but not speech-in-noise perception. Our results support the notion that perceptual entrainment benefits from rhythmic cues rely on top-down processing and thus are relatively muted when stimulus predictability is unknown. Additionally, we find that individual differences in musical pulse perception may underlie benefits of rhythmic cueing on subsequent speech perception.