The impact of task automaticity on speech in noise

Abstract

In the control of skeleto-motor movement, it is well established that the less complex, or more automatic a motor task is, the less variability and uncertainty there is in its performance. It was hypothesized that a similar relationship exists for integrated cognitive-motor tasks such as speech where the uncertainty with which actions are initiated may increase when the feedback loop is interrupted or dampened. To investigate this, the Lombard effect was exploited to explore the acoustic impact of background noise on speech during tasks increasing in automaticity. Fifteen healthy adults produced five speech tasks bearing different levels of automaticity (e.g., counting, reading, unprepared m..