The effect of monauralized binaural displays on speech intelligibility
Robert S. Bolia · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2002
It has often been demonstrated in laboratory settings that the spatial separation of multiple simultaneous talkers leads to enhanced intelligibility of a target message as well as an increase in the ease with which nontarget messages can be successfully ignored. This finding can be exploited in binaural intercom systems to improve communications’ effectiveness. In some situations, operators use monaural displays at least part of the time, for example when operators in command and control nodes remove one earcup to talk to other nearby operators, in an effort to avoid squandering channels. The present investigation was designed to determine whether such a temporary monauralization of a binaural intercom would result in reduced speech intelligibility relative to a diotic control condition. Participants listened to 2 or 3 simultaneous presentations of phrases from the coordinate response measure (Bolia, Nelson, Ericson, and Simpson, 2000) and responded according to the instructions spoken by the target talker. The dependent measure was the percentage of correct responses. Independent variables included listening condition (monaural left, monaural right, binaural) and the locations of the target and distractor talkers. Results indicate that the performance in the monaural conditions were worse than in the binaural conditions but better than the diotic control.