Listeners' reaction time response to speech-in-noise material

Abstract

The paper addresses the problem of choosing speech material for the experiments concerning measurements of the composed reaction time (CRT). A comparison was done of mean reaction times measured for a group of subjects exposed to Polish vowels /a, e, i, o, u, y/ and to non-words recorded on a dummy head against traffic noise (European Standard EN 1793-3) generated from an open window. The results of this experiment, analyzed for various signal-to-noise ratios and different reverberation conditions, indicate that the mean reaction time was greater for non-words (when the subjects were exposed to more complex signals) rather then for vowels. However, differences in the relative growth of the reaction time values with decrease of signal to noise-source output difference level (SNS) were relatively small.