Spatial release from informational masking enhances the early cortical representation of speech sounds.

Introduction: Spatial separation between competing speech streams reduces their confusion (informational masking), improving speech processing under challenging listening conditions. The precise stages of auditory processing involved in this benefit are not fully understood. This study used event-related potentials to examine the processing of target speech under conditions of informational masking and its spatial release.

Spatial release from informational masking declines with age: Evidence from a detection task in a virtual separation paradigm.

Declines in spatial release from informational masking may contribute to the speech-processing difficulties that older adults often experience within complex listening environments. The present study sought to answer two fundamental questions: (1) Does spatial release from informational masking decline with age and, if so, (2) does age predict this decline independently of age-typical hearing loss? Younger (18-34 years) and older (60-80 years) adults with age-typical hearing completed a yes/no target-detection task with low-pass filtered noise-vocoded speech designed to reduce non-spatial segregation cues and control for hearing loss. Participants detected a target voice among two-talker masking babble while a virtual spatial separation paradigm [Freyman, Helfer, McCall, and Clifton, J.

Attention is critical for spatial auditory object formation.

The precedence effect provides a novel way to examine the role of attention in auditory object formation. When presented with two identical sounds from different locations separated by a short stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA), listeners report a single auditory object at the location of the lead sound. When the SOA is above the echo threshold, listeners report hearing two auditory objects with different locations.

Nonverbal spatially selective attention in 4- and 5-year-old children.

Under some conditions 4- and 5-year-old children can differentially process sounds from attended and unattended locations. In fact, the latency of spatially selective attention effects on auditory processing as measured with event-related potentials (ERPs) is quite similar in young children and adults. However, it is not clear if developmental differences in the polarity, distribution, and duration of attention effects are best attributed to acoustic characteristics, availability of non-spatial attention cues, task demands, or domain.

Manipulations of listeners' echo perception are reflected in event-related potentials.

To gain information from complex auditory scenes, it is necessary to determine which of the many loudness, pitch, and timbre changes originate from a single source. Grouping sound into sources based on spatial information is complicated by reverberant energy bouncing off multiple surfaces and reaching the ears from directions other than the source's location. The ability to localize sounds despite these echoes has been explored with the precedence effect: Identical sounds presented from two locations with a short stimulus onset asynchrony (e.