Solving the “cocktail party problem” depends on segregating, selecting, and comprehending
the message of one specific talker among competing talkers. This chapter reviews the …

Speech perception in complex sound fields can greatly benefit from different unmasking
cues to segregate the target from interfering voices. This study investigated the role of three …

Paying attention to one speaker in a noisy place can be extremely difficult, because to-be-
attended and task-irrelevant speech compete for processing resources. We tested whether …

Identification of target speech was studied under masked conditions consisting of two or four
independent speech maskers. In the reference conditions, the maskers were colocated with …

We investigated changes in speech recognition and cognitive processing load due to the
masking release attributable to decreasing similarity between target and masker speech …

Speech perception is essential for daily communication. Background noise or concurrent
talkers, on the other hand, can make it challenging for listeners to track the target speech (ie …

Within the cochlea, broadband sounds like speech and music are filtered into a series of
narrowband signals, each with a relatively slowly varying envelope (ENV) imposed on a …

While conversing in a crowded social setting, a listener is often required to follow a target
speech signal amid multiple competing speech signals (the so-called “cocktail party” …

Loudspeaker-based virtual sound environments provide a valuable tool for studying speech
perception in realistic, but controllable and reproducible acoustic environments. The …

In many situations, listeners with sensorineural hearing loss demonstrate reduced spatial
release from masking compared to listeners with normal hearing. This deficit is particularly …