An international comparison of long-term average speech spectra

Byrne, Denis; Dillon, Harvey; Tran, Khanh Van; Arlinger, Stig; Wilbraham, Keith; Cox, Robyn M.; Hagerman, Björn; Hétu, Raymond; Kei, Joseph; Lui, Calvin; Kießling, Jürgen; Kotby, M. Nasser; Nasser, Nasser H. A.; Kholy, Wafaa A. H. El; Nakanishi, Yasuko; Oyer, Herbert J.; Powell, Rachael; Stephens, Dafydd; Meredith, R.; Sirimanna, Tony; Таварткиладзе, Г. А.; Frolenkov, Gregory I.; Westerman, Soren; Ludvigsen, Carl

doi:10.1121/1.410152

Cited by 460 publications

(303 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…Background conditions included quiet, steady-state noise, and fluctuating noise. Noise waveforms were generated independently for each trial, filtered to match the long-term average spectrum of speech (Byrne 1994), and gated on and off with the stimulus. The overall level of the steady-state noise was 73 dB SPL.…”

Section: Behavioral Experimentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Midbrain Synchrony to Envelope Structure Supports Behavioral Sensitivity to Single-Formant Vowel-Like Sounds in Noise

Henry

Abrams

Forst

et al. 2016

JARO

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Vowels make a strong contribution to speech perception under natural conditions. Vowels are encoded in the auditory nerve primarily through neural synchrony to temporal fine structure and to envelope fluctuations rather than through average discharge rate. Neural synchrony is thought to contribute less to vowel coding in central auditory nuclei, consistent with more limited synchronization to fine structure and the emergence of average-rate coding of envelope fluctuations. However, this hypothesis is largely unexplored, especially in background noise. The present study examined coding mechanisms at the level of the midbrain that support behavioral sensitivity to simple vowel-like sounds using neurophysiological recordings and matched behavioral experiments in the budgerigar. Stimuli were harmonic tone complexes with energy concentrated at one spectral peak, or formant frequency, presented in quiet and in noise. Behavioral thresholds for formant-frequency discrimination decreased with increasing amplitude of stimulus envelope fluctuations, increased in noise, and were similar between budgerigars and humans. Multiunit recordings in awake birds showed that the midbrain encodes vowel-like sounds both through response synchrony to envelope structure and through average rate. Whereas neural discrimination thresholds based on either coding scheme were sufficient to support behavioral thresholds in quiet, only synchrony-based neural thresholds could account for behavioral thresholds in background noise. These results reveal an incomplete transformation to average-rate coding of vowel-like sounds in the midbrain. Model simulations suggest that this transformation emerges due to modulation tuning, which is shared between birds and mammals. Furthermore, the results underscore the behavioral relevance of envelope synchrony in the midbrain for detection of small differences in vowel formant frequency under real-world listening conditions.

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Section: Behavioral Experimentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Midbrain Synchrony to Envelope Structure Supports Behavioral Sensitivity to Single-Formant Vowel-Like Sounds in Noise

Henry

Abrams

Forst

et al. 2016

JARO

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“…A Fast-Fourier Transform of this noise shows a flat spectrum with a 3 dB-down point at 7990 Hz. The fourth masker was a speechshaped noise modeled after female speech (Byrne, et al, 1994). This masker (hereafter referred to as SSN) was created by spectrally shaping a sample of Gaussian noise with the appropriate filter characteristics.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Aging and Speech-on-Speech Masking

2008

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Objectives-A common complaint of many older adults is difficulty communicating in situations where they must focus on one talker in the presence of other people speaking. In listening environments containing multiple talkers, age-related changes may be caused by increased sensitivity to energetic masking, increased susceptibility to informational masking (e.g., confusion between the target voice and masking voices), and/or cognitive deficits. The purpose of the present study was to tease out these contributions to the difficulties that older adults experience in speech-on-speech masking situations.Design-Groups of younger, normal-hearing individuals and older adults with varying degrees of hearing sensitivity (n = 12 per group) participated in a study of sentence recognition in the presence of four types of maskers: a two-talker masker consisting of voices of the same sex as the target voice, a two-talker masker of voices of the opposite sex as the target, a signal-envelope-modulated noise derived from the two-talker complex, and a speech-shaped steady noise. Subjects also completed a voice discrimination task to determine the extent to which they were able to incidentally learn to tell apart the target voice from the same-sex masking voices and to examine whether this ability influenced speech-on-speech masking.Results-Results showed that older adults had significantly poorer performance in the presence of all four types of maskers, with the largest absolute difference for the same-sex masking condition. When the data were analyzed in terms of relative group differences (i.e., adjusting for absolute performance) the greatest effect was found for the opposite-sex masker. Degree of hearing loss was significantly related to performance in several listening conditions. Some older subjects demonstrated a reduced ability to discriminate between the masking and target voices; performance on this task was not related to speech recognition ability.Conclusions-The overall pattern of results suggests that although amount of informational masking does not seem to differ between older and younger listeners, older adults (particularly those with hearing loss) evidence a deficit in the ability to selectively attend to a target voice, even when the masking voices are from talkers of the opposite sex. Possible explanations for these findings include problems understanding speech in the presence of a masker with temporal and spectral fluctuations and/or age-related changes in cognitive function.The primary auditory complaint of many older people is difficulty understanding speech in noisy situations. Numerous studies have documented this age-related decline in the ability to comprehend speech in the presence of a masker (e.g., Dubno, Dirks, & Shaefer, 1987;Plomp & Mimpen 1979). This research has demonstrated that older adults with presbycusis generally have greater difficulty understanding masked speech than do young, normal-hearing individuals. Although a portion of this problem is because of the filtering and distortio...

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“…This international LTASS is based on a study conducted by Byrne et al (1994), who recorded speech samples from a number of speakers for thirteen different languages. Their findings indicate that the LTASS across samples was so similar that it may be reasonable to use a universal LTASS noise for a variety of applications and languages.…”

Section: Type Of Noisementioning

confidence: 99%

Sentence recognition in noise: Variables in compilation and interpretation of tests

Theunissen

Swanepoel

Hanekom

2009

International Journal of Audiology

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Tests of sentence recognition in noise constitute an essential tool for the assessment of auditory abilities that are representative of everyday listening experiences. A number of recent articles have reported on the development of such tests, documenting different approaches and methods. However, both the development and interpretation of these tests require careful consideration of many variables. This article reviews and categorizes the stimulus, presentation, subject, response, and performance variables influencing the development and interpretation of tests of sentence recognition in noise. A systematic framework is utilized to document published findings on these variables. Recommendations and guidelines, based on test performance requirements and test objectives, are provided concerning the interpretation of results and the development of new test materials.

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An international comparison of long-term average speech spectra

Cited by 460 publications

References 23 publications

Midbrain Synchrony to Envelope Structure Supports Behavioral Sensitivity to Single-Formant Vowel-Like Sounds in Noise

Midbrain Synchrony to Envelope Structure Supports Behavioral Sensitivity to Single-Formant Vowel-Like Sounds in Noise

Aging and Speech-on-Speech Masking

Sentence recognition in noise: Variables in compilation and interpretation of tests

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