When people listen to speech in noisy places, they can understand more words spoken by someone familiar, such as a friend or partner, than someone unfamiliar. Yet we know little about how voice familiarity develops over time. We exposed participants (N = 50) to three voices for different lengths of time (speaking 88, 166, or 478 sentences during familiarization and training). These previously heard voices were recognizable and more intelligible when presented with a competing talker than novel voices—even the voice previously heard for the shortest duration. However, recognition and intelligibility improved at different rates with longer exposures. Whereas recognition was similar for all previously heard voices, intelligibility was best for the voice that had been heard most extensively. The speech-intelligibility benefit for the most extensively heard voice (10%–15%) is as large as that reported for voices that are naturally very familiar (friends and spouses)—demonstrating that the intelligibility of a voice can be improved substantially after only an hour of training.

当人们在嘈杂的地方听演讲时，他们可以比不熟悉的人理解更多的人（例如朋友或伙伴）所说的话。然而，我们对语音熟悉度如何随时间发展知之甚少。我们暴露了参与者（N= 50) 到不同时间长度的三种声音（在熟悉和训练期间说 88、166 或 478 个句子）。这些先前听到的声音在与竞争者说话时比新颖的声音更容易识别且更易于理解——即使是之前听到的持续时间最短的声音。然而，随着曝光时间的延长，识别度和可理解度以不同的速度提高。尽管对所有以前听到的声音的识别是相似的，但对最广泛听到的声音的可懂度最好。最广泛听到的声音 (10%–15%) 的语音清晰度优势与自然非常熟悉的声音（朋友和配偶）所报告的一样大——这表明声音的清晰度可以显着提高一个小时的训练。