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Cortical Auditory Processing Of Informational Masking Effects By Target-Masker Similarity And Stimulus Uncertainty, Christopher Edward Niemczak

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Purpose: Understanding speech in a background of other people talking is one of the most difficult listening challenges for hearing-impaired individuals, and even for those with normal hearing. Speech-on-speech masking, is known to contribute to increased perceptual difficulty over non-speech background noise because of informational masking provided over and above the energetic masking effect. While informational masking research has identified factors of similarity and uncertainty between target and masker that contribute to reduced behavioral performance in speech background noise, critical gaps in knowledge including the underlying neural-perceptual processes remain. By systematically manipulating aspects of similarity and uncertainty in the same …