Abstract
The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of speaker gender, frequency content and distinctiveness on performance in an auditory search task. Male and female voices were manipulated and combined to create several conditions that examined distinctiveness, distracter heterogeneity, and artificially altered sound frequency. Participants were required to monitor four simultaneous streams of auditory data consisting of digits and letters. Participants listened for a target and then indicated which speaker presented the target. No significant differences were found between male and female targets. Participant's ability to localize targets was greatest when targets were distinct from their distracters. This distinctiveness occurred when either gender or frequency differences between the target and distracters were present.
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