Generalization of Perceptual Learning of Degraded Speech Across Talkers

Conclusions Learning of NV speech generalized completely between talkers. Two additional experiments confirmed this result. Thus, when listeners are trained to understand NV speech, they are not learning talker- or accent-specific features but instead are learning how to use the information available in the degraded signal. The results suggest that people with cochlear implants, who experience spectrally degraded speech, may not be too disadvantaged if they learn to understand speech through their implant by listening primarily to just 1 other talker, such as a spouse.
Source: Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research - Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research