Message cues, intelligibility, and comprehension: a follow-up investigation

From an earlier study (Garrett and Saint-Pierre, J. Aud. Res., 1980, 20, 71-80) on the perception of sentences in noise (S/N = -5, -3, -1 db) showing that cues identifying the topic of messages can significantly increase comprehension, the effect of the cues was reasoned to be the result of improving either the peripheral processes of recognition associated with initial word reception or the more central processes of interpreting sense and meaning. Supplementary analyses are here performed on these data: number of words heard correctly, length of response, accuracy of repeated messages, and an overall Performance Index. The lesser significance in all these analyses for the cue condition than was found in the original analyses for comprehension only, coupled with the consistent and highly significant differences across S/N for the same statistics, was taken as indirect support for the view that the primary effect of the cues was operative at the level of central rather than of peripheral processes associated with initial reception.