Formant discrimination in noise for isolated vowels

Formant discrimination for isolated vowels presented in noise was investigated for normal-hearing listeners. Discrimination thresholds for F1 and F2, for the seven American English vowels /i, I, epsilon, ae, symbol see text], a, u/, were measured under two types of noise, long-term speech-shaped noise (LTSS) and multitalker babble, and also under quiet listening conditions. Signal-to-noise ratios (SNR) varied from -4 to +4 dB in steps of 2 dB. All three factors, formant frequency, signal-to-noise ratio, and noise type, had significant effects on vowel formant discrimination. Significant interactions among the three factors showed that threshold-frequency functions depended on SNR and noise type. The thresholds at the lowest levels of SNR were highly elevated by a factor of about 3 compared to those in quiet. The masking functions (threshold vs SNR) were well described by a negative exponential over F1 and F2 for both LTSS and babble noise. Speech-shaped noise was a slightly more effective masker than multitalker babble, presumably reflecting small benefits (1.5 dB) due to the temporal variation of the babble.