Yanny or Laurel? Acoustic and non-acoustic cues that influence speech perception
Brian B. Monson · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2018
“What do you hear?” This question that divided the masses highlights the complex nature of speech perception, which is dependent upon both acoustic and non-acoustic information available to the brain. In this talk, I will discuss some of the most recent advances in our understanding of both types of information that enable the complicated task of speech perception under adverse listening conditions. Recent research from our lab and others has revealed a surprising amount of speech signal information resides in the highest audible frequency range for humans (i.e., beyond 8 kHz), providing localization, phonetic, and other speech source information. These cues, as well as non-acoustic (e.g., experiential, visual, lexical) cues likely become increasingly important when a listener is faced with ambiguity and/or degradation of the acoustic signal. Given the diversity of prior experience from individual to individual, differences in perception of an ambiguous/degraded speech signal are to be expected.