Examples of illusions increasing intelligibility

[Richard M Warren <rmwarren@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Stuart Rosen wrote that:

>in much work with improving the perception of speech in noise, it is very
>easy to make the speech 'sound' better, but very hard to raise its
>intellibility

>Are people aware of other examples like this, in which an illusory
>percept improves performance objectively?


In reply:

When noise is inserted into the spectral gap between two widely separated
narrow bands of speech (either word lists or sentences), intelligibility
increases [Warren et al., Perception & Psychophysics, 1997, 59, 275-283].

When noise is added to multiple temporal gaps in broadband speech,
intelligibility does not improve for word lists (but they do sound
better). However, when noise is added to multiple temporal gaps in
sentences, intelligibility does increase [Bashford et al., Perception &
Psychophysics, 1992, 51, 211-217].