Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
Previous research has demonstrated that the spatial separation of multiple simultaneous talkers improves detection and intelligibility of a critical speech signal among non-signal speech events Nelson et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 103, 2341–2342(A) (1998); M. L. Hawley et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 99, 2596(A) (1996). However, few findings on the effects of varying phrase onsets have been reported J. C. Webster and P. O. Thompson, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 26, 396–402 (1954). The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effect of varying the interval between sentence onsets on call sign detection and message intelligibility. The relative onset times of two to eight temporally overlapping phrases were varied systematically in both spatially separated and nonspatially separated conditions on the horizontal plane. The phrases were presented virtually to five normal-hearing listeners. All possible temporal positions of the target phrase were examined. Results will be discussed in the context of listening to speech in real-world situations. Work supported by AFOSR.
Simpson et al. (1999) studied this question.