Data from: Individual differences in selective attention predict speech identification at a cocktail party

Listeners with normal hearing show considerable individual differences in speech understanding when competing speakers are present, as in a crowded restaurant. Here, we show that one source of this variance are individual differences in the ability to focus selective attention on a target stimulus in the presence of distractors. In 50 young normal-hearing listeners, the performance in tasks measuring auditory and visual selective attention was associated with sentence identification in the presence of spatially separated competing speakers. Together, the measures of selective attention explained a similar proportion of variance as the binaural sensitivity for the acoustic temporal fine structure. Working memory span, age, and audiometric thresholds showed no significant association with speech understanding. These results suggest that a reduced ability to focus attention on a target is one reason why some listeners with normal hearing sensitivity have difficulty communicating in situations with background noise.正常听力听众在存在竞争语音的场景（如拥挤餐厅）中，言语理解能力存在显著的个体差异。本研究表明，此类个体差异的来源之一，是听众在干扰物存在时将选择性注意力聚焦于目标刺激的能力差异。针对50名年轻正常听力听众，测量听觉与视觉选择性注意力的任务表现，与空间分离竞争语音下的句子识别成绩存在关联。综合来看，选择性注意力相关测量指标对变异量的解释比例，与声学时间精细结构的双耳敏感度相当。工作记忆广度、年龄与听阈则与言语理解能力无显著关联。上述结果表明，将注意力聚焦于目标的能力受损，正是部分听力正常者在背景噪声环境中沟通困难的原因之一。