ABSTRACT
This study aims to identify aspects of speech-in-noise recognition that are susceptible to training, focusing on whether listeners can learn to adapt to target talkers (“tune in”) and learn to better cope with various maskers (“tune out”) after short-term training. Listeners received training on English sentence recognition in speech-shaped noise (SSN), Mandarin babble, or English babble. Results from a speech-in-babble posttest showed evidence of both tuning in and tuning out: (1) listeners were able to take advantage of target talker familiarity; (2) training with babble was more effective than SSN training; and (3) after babble training, listeners improved most in coping with the babble in which they were trained. In general, the results show that processes related both to tuning in to speech targets and tuning out speech maskers can be improved with auditory training.
