Abstract:

The purpose of this study is to determine how many simultaneous streams of running speech a listener can detect and correctly enumerate. Thirty normal-hearing subjects will participate. Stimuli will consist of three sets of digitally mixed recordings of female talkers where the number of talkers in each set ranges from two to ten. Subjects will be asked to identify how many speakers they hear and to rate the certainty with which they make their judgments. Each subject will be tested in the left ear, right ear, and binaurally. Results are expected to demonstrate the limits of the auditory system in resolving individual speakers or streams of speech without localization cues.