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Effect of semantic contextual cues on listeners’ semantic prediction in speech masking listening conditions: Evidence from eye-tracking measurements

Poster Session F - Tuesday, March 10, 2026, 8:00 – 10:00 am PDT, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballroom

Setareh Dorood¹ (), Tania Zamuner¹, Laura Sabourin¹; ¹University of Ottawa

Semantic contextual cues aid word prediction in optimal listening conditions; however, it is unclear how adults predict words in sentences masked by background speech. This eye-tracking study used the Visual World Paradigm to investigate how semantic contextual cues impact participants’ prediction of words when presented with speech masking in a language that either matched or did not match the target sentences. Native English speakers (N = 31) heard low predictability sentences (e.g., I sent her a new skirt) and highly predictable sentences (e.g., I ironed my new skirt) in the presence of English speech masking (linguistically matched listening condition) or French speech masking (linguistically mismatched listening condition). Analyses revealed that the effect of sentence predictability (F(1, 30) = 41.27, p < .001, η² = .27) was significant on predictive looking, indicating that participants could predict the upcoming words in the highly predictable sentences masked by speech. The interaction between sentence predictability and the language of speech masking (F(1, 30) = 3.36, p = .077, η² = .02) showed a trend towards significance that requires further testing. Therefore, future research could use cognitively more demanding sentences (e.g., longer target sentences or syntactically more difficult target sentences) and apply more diverse languages (English, Mandarin, or Persian) as the background speech to examine whether there is any significant interaction between the language of speech masking and sentence predictability. Keywords: Speech masking, semantic contextual cue, mismatched listening condition, matched listening condition

Topic Area: LANGUAGE: Semantic