This study investigates masking effects occurring during speech comprehension in the presence of concurrent speech signals. We examined the differential effects of 4- to 8-talker babble (natural speech) or babble-like noise (reversed speech) on word identification. We measured phoneme identification rates. Results showed that different types of linguistic information can interfere with speech recognition and that different resistances are observed for different phonemes depending on interfering noise.

Index Terms: Speech-in-speech; Energetic masking; Informational masking; Phoneme resistance