Marion DAVID : Toward sequential segregation of speech sounds based on spatial cues

Abstract:

In a context of competing sound sources, the auditory scene analysis aims to draw an accurate and useful representation of the perceived sounds. Solving such a scene consists of grouping sound events which come from the same source and segregating them from the other sounds. This PhD work intended to further our understanding of how the human auditory system processes these complex acoustic environments, with a particular emphasis on the potential influence of spatial cues on perceptual stream segregation. All the studies conducted during this PhD endeavoured to rely on realistic configurations.In a real environment, the diffraction and reflection properties of the room and the head lead to distortions of the sounds depending on the source and receiver positions. This phenomenon is named colouration. Speechshaped noises, as a first approximation of speech sounds, were used to evaluate the effect of this colouration on stream segregation. The results showed that the slight monaural spectral differences induced by head and room colouration can induce segregation. Moreover, this segregation was enhanced by adding the binaural cues associated with a given position (ITD, ILD). Especially, a second study suggested that the monaural intensity variations across time at each ear were more relevant for stream segregation than the interaural level differences. The results also indicated that the percept of lateralization associated with a given ITD helped the segregation when the lateralization was salient enough. Besides, the ITD per se could also favour segregation.The natural ability to perceptually solve an auditory scene is relevant for speech intelligibility. The main idea was to replicate the first experiments with speech items instead of frozen noises. A characteristic of running speech is a high degree of acoustical variability used to convey information. Thus, as a first step, we investigated the robustness of stream segregation based on a frequency difference to variability on the same acoustical cue (i.e., frequency). The second step was to evaluate the fundamental frequency difference that enables to separate speech items. Indeed, according to the limited effects measured in the two first experiments, it was assumed that spatial cues might be relevant for stream segregation only in interaction with another “stronger” cue such as a F0 difference.The results of these preliminary experiments showed first that the introduction of a large spectral variability introduced within pure tone streams can lead to a complicated percept, presumably consisting of multiple streams. Second, the results suggested that a fundamental frequency difference comprised between 3 and 5 semitones enables to separate speech item. These experiments provided results that will be used to design the next experiment investigating how an ambiguous percept could be biased toward segregation by introducing spatial cues.