Informational and energetic masking effects in multitalker speech perception
Doug Brungart
(Air Force Wright Patterson Research Laboratory)

When listeners attempt to comprehend a target speech signal that is obscured by one or more interfering speech signals, two types of masking occur. Energetic masking occurs when the interfering speech is more intense than the target speech within the same critical band and the target signal is rendered inaudible at the periphery. Informational masking occurs when two or more competing speech messages are audible and the listener is unable to segregate the elements of the target speech from the combined speech signal. Although energetic masking is now understood well enough to predict intelligibility directly from spectral features of the target and masking signals (using the well-known articulation index) relatively little is known about informational masking in speech. This talk will examine the differences between informational and energetic masking, explore some factors that influence the amount of informational masking in a multitalker stimulus, and describe some techniques that can be used to isolate the informational and energetic components of speech-on-speech masking.

Relevant material:

Douglas S. Brungart, Brian D. Simpson, Mark A. Ericson, and Kimberly R. Scott (2001). Informational and energetic masking effects in the perception of multiple simultaneous talkers. J Acoust Soc Am 110, 2527-2538.
Douglas S. Brungart and Brian D. Simpson (2002). The effects of spatial separation in distance on the informational and energetic masking of a nearby speech signal. J Acoust Soc Am 112, 664-676.
Douglas S. Brungart and Brian D. Simpson (2002). Within-ear and across-ear interference in a cocktail-party listening task. J Acoust Soc Am 112, 2985-2995.