Although speech sounds are highly variable and listeners may have limited cognitive resources under adverse conditions, listeners are shown to overcome these challenges by flexibly adapting to varying contextual demands and achieve perceptual constancy. As such, understanding how listeners cope with adverse conditions is a fundamental issue for better understanding the perceptual processes and cognitive mechanisms underlying speech perception. Most studies of perceptual adaptation in speech have thus far typically reported on group level observations, which may mask considerable differences in how individual listeners adapt. This project addresses these issues by examining the mechanisms underlying adaptive plasticity in speech perception using an individual differences approach.
The goal of this project is to better understand the linguistic and cognitive mechanisms underlying adaptive plasticity in speech perception. We examine how individuals overcome adverse listening conditions and what makes some individuals better adapters to variability in the speech signal and cognitive load.