Perceptual consistency in phoneme categorization is driven by neural consistency and predicts improved speech-in-noise performance

Listeners discretize the speech signal by assigning sounds to phonetic categories, though there is variability in how individuals accomplish categorization. Having more consistent categorization of sounds may be advantageous for understanding speech-in-noise (SIN). Though, it is unclear how different levels of neural processing in the auditory system reflect these perceptual differences. We recorded brainstem frequency-following responses (FFRs) and cortical event-related potentials (ERPs) while listeners actively labeled vowels along an acoustic-phonetic continuum using a visual analog scale. We computed intertrial consistency of neural responses to index the stability of listeners’ neural speech representations across stimulus presentations. We also assessed how faithfully midbrain and cortical responses represented stimulus acoustics using representational dissimilarity matrices (RDMs) computed across all token pairs. Neural RDMs were then compared with acoustic and phonetic category RDMs to assess whether FFRs and ERPs carried gradient vs. categorical information of the speech signal. We found greater behavioral consistency during phoneme labeling was correlated with improved SIN scores. Neurally, we found greater cortical or subcortical consistency predicted greater behavioral consistency. RDMs revealed subcortical responses retained more acoustic details, while cortical responses more closely reflected abstract phoneme categories. Our findings reveal important benefits of perceptual consistency to other domains of speech perception. We find perceptual consistency is driven by more consistent encoding of speech at either a cortical or subcortical level. More consistent sensory processing could provide a more stable readout of the speech signal to higher cortical brain areas which could confer advantages to later perceptual processes downstream.