Exploring the relationship between task difficulty, head-related transfer function and spatial release from masking in a speech-on-speech experiment
Abstract
It is known that individuals make use of spatial hearing cues to improve the audibility of a target signal and separate it from competing sounds. This phenomenon is known as spatial release from masking (SRM). Recent research has shown that this happens also when sources are located in the median plane, where interaural differences are limited. When assessing this within virtual conditions, it has been shown that employing individually measured head-related transfer functions (HRTFs) results in higher SRM abilities compared to using non-individual filters. In a previously published work, we found that Spanish speakers benefit from individual HRTFs when discriminating a target English speech from a single masker in the median plane. This study replicates the protocol of that previous work, varying the number of maskers and participants' English proficiency levels to explore relationships among task difficulty and HRTF use. Results from a first experiment show that English speakers behave differently to Spanish ones; their SRM advantage is not significant. We suggest that this is due to their language proficiency, which allows them to rely on spectral glimpsing alone, that is, exploiting spectro-temporal gaps between voices rather than spectral cues introduced by spatial separation. A second experiment introduces a second speech masker, co-located with the first; by making the task more complex, participants seem to increase their reliance on spatial cues, resulting in significant effects of masker position and HRTF. This highlights a trade-off between the use of target glimpsing and spatial cues and the need for further exploration into how task difficulty influences SRM with different HRTFs.
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BibTeX
@article{vicente2026exploring,
title = {{Exploring the relationship between task difficulty, head-related transfer function and spatial release from masking in a speech-on-speech experiment}},
author = {Thibault Vicente and Daniel González-Toledo and María Cuevas-Rodríguez and Luis Molina-Tanco and Arcadio Reyes-Lecuona and Lorenzo Picinali},
journal = {Hearing Research},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.1016/j.heares.2025.109490},
url = {https://hal.science/hal-05768055v1},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Exploring the relationship between task difficulty, head-related transfer function and spatial release from masking in a speech-on-speech experiment
AU - Thibault Vicente
AU - Daniel González-Toledo
AU - María Cuevas-Rodríguez
AU - Luis Molina-Tanco
AU - Arcadio Reyes-Lecuona
AU - Lorenzo Picinali
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/28
JO - Hearing Research
DO - 10.1016/j.heares.2025.109490
UR - https://hal.science/hal-05768055v1
AB - It is known that individuals make use of spatial hearing cues to improve the audibility of a target signal and separate it from competing sounds. This phenomenon is known as spatial release from masking (SRM). Recent research has shown that this happens also when sources are located in the median plane, where interaural differences are limited. When assessing this within virtual conditions, it has been shown that employing individually measured head-related transfer functions (HRTFs) results in higher SRM abilities compared to using non-individual filters. In a previously published work, we found that Spanish speakers benefit from individual HRTFs when discriminating a target English speech from a single masker in the median plane. This study replicates the protocol of that previous work, varying the number of maskers and participants' English proficiency levels to explore relationships among task difficulty and HRTF use. Results from a first experiment show that English speakers behave differently to Spanish ones; their SRM advantage is not significant. We suggest that this is due to their language proficiency, which allows them to rely on spectral glimpsing alone, that is, exploiting spectro-temporal gaps between voices rather than spectral cues introduced by spatial separation. A second experiment introduces a second speech masker, co-located with the first; by making the task more complex, participants seem to increase their reliance on spatial cues, resulting in significant effects of masker position and HRTF. This highlights a trade-off between the use of target glimpsing and spatial cues and the need for further exploration into how task difficulty influences SRM with different HRTFs.
SN - 0378-5955
SN - 1878-5891
ER -