Background: Pitch patterns are crucial for speech perception in prosodically rich languages like Malayalam. Their interaction with auditory maskers can guide auditory training and listening strategies. Objective: To investigate the influence of auditory maskers on pitch pattern perception in low-frequency bisyllabic Malayalam words among young adults. Methods: Twenty validated low-frequency phonetically balanced Malayalam words were recorded with three pitch patterns: rising, falling, and flat. Stimuli were presented under five masking conditions: 2-talker babble, 4-talker babble, similar gender masker, different gender masker, and speech-shaped noise. Speech perception thresholds (SNR-50) were measured using an adaptive procedure in Smirti Shravan software. Results and Discussion: Rising patterns led to better perception in multi-talker babble due to higher salience, while falling patterns were more affected. The different gender masker yielded significantly lower SNR-50 values (less masking) than the similar gender masker, suggesting enhanced stream segregation. Minimal differences across patterns with speech-shaped noise indicated primarily energetic masking. Masking release was significantly modulated by pitch pattern under linguistic maskers, likely due to temporal dips and amplitude valleys in the masker. Similar masking results were obtained for the low-frequency word list compared to other stimuli. Conclusion: Pitch pattern significantly influences speech perception in noise, especially with linguistic maskers.
Prakash et al. (Sat,) studied this question.
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