A non-linear efferent-inspired model of the auditory system; matching human confusions in stationary noise

Authors:
David P. Messing;Lorraine Delhorne;Ed Bruckert;Louis D. Braida;Oded Ghitza
Affiliations:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA;Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA;Sensimetrics Corporation, Malden, Massachusetts, USA;Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA;Sensimetrics Corporation, Malden, Massachusetts, USA
Venue:
Speech Communication
Year:
2009

Citing 2
Cited 0

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Abstract

Current predictors of speech intelligibility are inadequate for understanding and predicting speech confusions caused by acoustic interference. We develop a model of auditory speech processing that includes a phenomenological representation of the action of the Medial Olivocochlear efferent pathway and that is capable of predicting consonant confusions made by normal hearing listeners in speech-shaped Gaussian noise. We then use this model to predict human error patterns of initial consonants in consonant-vowel-consonant words in the context of a Dynamic Rhyme Test. In the process we demonstrate its potential for speech discrimination in noise. Our results produced performance that was robust to varying levels of stationary additive speech-shaped noise and which mimicked human performance in discrimination of synthetic speech as measured by the Chi-squared test.