The effects of training length on the perceptual learning of time-compressed speech and its generalization

Brief exposure to time-compressed speech yields both learning and generalization. Whether such learning continues over the course of multi-session training and if so whether it is more or less specific than exposure-induced learning is not clear, because the outcomes of intensive practice with time-compressed speech have rarely been reported. The goal here was to determine whether prolonged training on time-compressed speech yields additional learning and generalization beyond that induced by brief exposure. Listeners practiced the semantic verification of time-compressed sentences for one or three training sessions. Identification of trained and untrained tokens was subsequently compared between listeners who trained for one or three sessions, listeners who were briefly exposed to 20 time-compressed sentences and naive listeners. Trained listeners outperformed the other groups of listeners on the trained condition, but only the group that was trained for three sessions outperformed the other groups when tested with untrained tokens. These findings suggest that although learning of distorted speech can occur rapidly, more stable learning and generalization might be achieved with longer, multi-session practice. It is suggested that the findings are consistent with the framework proposed by the Reverse Hierarchy Theory of perceptual learning.