The influence of perceived talker differences on the talker variability effect under cochlear implant simulation

Abstract

Speech recognition is harder when communicating with multiple talkers. This “talker variability effect” has not been extensively examined for cochlear implant (CI) users, who have difficulty discriminating same-gender talkers but not different-gender talkers. A shadowing task was conducted with normal hearing listeners (N=19) under CI simulation. The test consisted of a single-talker condition (ST), and two multi-talker conditions with different male and female voices (MT-M) or only different female voices (MT-F). Response times were longer and accuracy was lower in MT-M compared to MT-F. Thus, the talker variability effect was observed only when talkers were perceptible under CI simulation.