A model for multitalker speech perception.

A listener's ability to understand a target speaker in the presence of one or more simultaneous competing speakers is subject to two types of masking: energetic and informational. Energetic masking takes place when target and interfering signals overlap in time and frequency resulting in portions of target becoming inaudible. Informational masking occurs when the listener is unable to distinguish target and interference, while both are audible. A computational model of multitalker speech perception is presented to account for both types of masking. Human perception in the presence of energetic masking is modeled using a speech recognizer that treats the masked time-frequency units of target as missing data. The effects of informational masking are modeled as errors in target segregation by a speech separation system. On a systematic evaluation, the performance of the proposed model is in broad agreement with the results of a recent perceptual study.