Variability in noise-masked consonant identification

Speech communication commonly occurs in the presence of noise. Perceptual errors in the perception of noise-masked speech vary as a function of noise type (e.g., white noise, speech-shaped noise, multi-talker babble), listener characteristics (e.g., listeners with hearing loss, non-native listeners), and target stimulus properties (e.g., native language of the talker, casual vs clear speech). There is evidence of talker-specific effects in multitalker-babble-masked sentence intelligibility as well as token-specific effects in speech-shaped-noisemasked CV syllables. The present work analyzes talkerand token-level variation in the identification of a large number of tokens of four consonant categories [t], [d], [s], [z] produced by 20 talkers and masked by multi-talker babble. A fitted multilevel logistic regression model illustrates variation in intelligibility between talkers and with respect to within-talker (between-token) variation. The results are discussed in relation to landmark theory and the glimpsing model of speech-in-noise perception.