Level Discrimination of Speech Sounds by Hearing-Impaired Individuals With and Without Hearing Amplification

Whitmer, William M.; Akeroyd, Michael A.

doi:10.1097/aud.0b013e318202b620

Cited by 12 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…A JND in SNR of 3 dB is substantially greater than the values for JND in level of broadband sounds previously reported, for example, 1.4 dB for HI listeners ( Whitmer & Akeroyd, 2011 ) and 0.7–0.9 dB for NH listeners ( Buus, Florentine, & Zwicker, 1995 ; Miller, 1947 ; Montgomery, 1935 ), and found here in Experiment 4 (0.7 dB). We suggest that this difference between conventional level discrimination and SNR discrimination may be related to the added difficulty of estimating SNR, given that SNR discrimination requires monitoring the levels of both the speech and noise in each interval.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 83%

The Just-Noticeable Difference in Speech-to-Noise Ratio

2015

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Just-noticeable differences (JNDs) have been measured for various features of sounds, but despite its importance to communication, there is no benchmark for what is a just-noticeable—and possibly meaningful—difference in speech-to-noise ratio (SNR). SNR plays a crucial role in speech communication for normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners. Difficulty hearing speech in background noise—a poor SNR—often leads to dissatisfaction with hearing-assistance devices. While such devices attempt through various strategies to address this problem, it is not currently known how much improvement in SNR is needed to provide a noticeable benefit. To investigate what is a noticeable benefit, we measured the JND in SNR for both normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners. Here, we report the SNR JNDs of 69 participants of varying hearing ability, estimated using either an adaptive or fixed-level procedure. The task was to judge which of the two intervals containing a sentence in speech-spectrum noise presented over headphones was clearer. The level of each interval was roved to reduce the influence of absolute level cues. The results of both procedures showed an average SNR JND of 3 dB that was independent of hearing ability. Further experiments using a subset of normal-hearing listeners showed that level roving does elevate threshold. These results suggest that noise reduction schemes may need to achieve a benefit greater than 3 dB to be reliably discriminable.

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 83%

The Just-Noticeable Difference in Speech-to-Noise Ratio

2015

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“…In the top panels, for level increments in the pre-vocalic (Cv) burst of /pæk/, bars labeled PC and PI depict average LDTs (ordinate) for Cv in context and Cv in isolation; for level increments in the post-vocalic (vC) burst of /pæk/, bars labeled KC and KI depict the LDTs for vC in context and vC in isolation. For ease of comparison, on the left-hand side panels, the dashed horizontal lines depict the LDT for level increments encompassing the entire CvC word measured by [ 8 ]; since this LDT was estimated only at a correct probability of 0.71, it is not included in the right-hand side panels. In all panels, error bars depict 1.0 standard error below the mean.…”

Section: Experiments I: Noise Bursts In Isolation or In Word Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Another perceptual-significance issue relevant to CvC words is whether differential sensitivity is uniform or varies depending on which phoneme carries a level increment: the consonants, the vowel, or both. For example, to assess the effects of dynamic-range compression on sensitivity to speech-level differences, level discrimination thresholds (LDTs) for whole CvC words were measured in hearing-impaired users of compression or linear hearing aids [ 8 ]. In both amplification conditions, the level differences encompassed the full CvC word, including the noise-bursts of both consonants plus the vowel.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Since there were no significant differences between the LDTs measured in the two amplification conditions, the authors concluded that the perceptual significance of compression effects was small, possibly because of the low hearing-aid compression ratios. However, this conclusion assumes constant differential sensitivity across all CvC phonemes; an alternate interpretation is that the LDTs reported in [ 8 ] are for level differences in the vowel rather than in the much briefer and softer consonant noise bursts, in which the compression effects could be stronger, but this possibility remains to be tested. Likewise, in moderate to moderately-severe hearing-impaired participants, significant recognition improvements were observed [ 4 ] for /ip/, /ik/ but not for /it/ when the consonant noise-burst level was increased by compression with 12-ms release time.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Object-based attention modulates the discrimination of level increments in stop-consonant noise bursts

2018

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This study tested the hypothesis that object-based attention modulates the discrimination of level increments in stop-consonant noise bursts. With consonant-vowel-consonant (CvC) words consisting of an ≈80-dB vowel (v), a pre-vocalic (Cv) and a post-vocalic (vC) stop-consonant noise burst (≈60-dB SPL), we measured discrimination thresholds (LDTs) for level increments (ΔL) in the noise bursts presented either in CvC context or in isolation. In the 2-interval 2-alternative forced-choice task, each observation interval presented a CvC word (e.g., /pæk/ /pæk/), and normal-hearing participants had to discern ΔL in the Cv or vC burst. Based on the linguistic word labels, the auditory events of each trial were perceived as two auditory objects (Cv-v-vC and Cv-v-vC) that group together the bursts and vowels, hindering selective attention to ΔL. To discern ΔL in Cv or vC, the events must be reorganized into three auditory objects: the to-be-attended pre-vocalic (Cv–Cv) or post-vocalic burst pair (vC–vC), and the to-be-ignored vowel pair (v–v). Our results suggest that instead of being automatic this reorganization requires training, in spite of using familiar CvC words. Relative to bursts in isolation, bursts in context always produced inferior ΔL discrimination accuracy (a context effect), which depended strongly on the acoustic separation between the bursts and the vowel, being much keener for the object apart from (post-vocalic) than for the object adjoining (pre-vocalic) the vowel (a temporal-position effect). Variability in CvC dimensions that did not alter the noise-burst perceptual grouping had minor effects on discrimination accuracy. In addition to being robust and persistent, these effects are relatively general, evincing in forced-choice tasks with one or two observation intervals, with or without variability in the temporal position of ΔL, and with either fixed or roving CvC standards. The results lend support to the hypothesis.

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“…Dimitrijevic et al, 2004). The adverse effects of age-related hearing loss on auditory speech recognition also greatly depend on the type of speech stimuli (Lash, Rogers, Zoller, & Wingfield, 2013;Whitmer & Akeroyd, 2011). When speech stimuli are presented without a supportive semantic context, hearing-impaired individuals show inferior performance compared to their counterparts with normal hearing on the identification of auditory speech stimuli (Lash et al, 2013).…”

Section: Impact Of Hearing Loss On Speech Recognitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Time is of the essence in speech perception! : Get it fast, or think about it

Moradi¹

2014

Studies From the Swedish Institute for Disability Research

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Speech recognition occurs when attending to speech stimuli in auditory, visual, or audiovisual modalities under optimum (e.g., in silence) or degraded listening conditions (i.e., in background noise or in individuals with hearing impairment). The present thesis contains details of the first study to show how background noise (steady-state white noise) delayed the identification of different types of speech stimuli (consonants, words, and final words in sentence) in auditory and audiovisual modalities by calculating the isolation points (IPs, the shortest time from the onset of an speech stimulus required for correct identification of that speech stimulus). The cognitive demands of perceiving speech stimuli under each type of listening condition (silence vs. noise) were also tested by measuring the correlations between IPs of each type of speech stimulus (in each type of listening condition) and tests of working memory capacity (i.e., the reading span test, Rönnberg, Arlinger, Lyxell, & Kinnefors, 1989) and attentional capacity (i.e., the Paced Auditory Serial Attention Gronwall, 1977). In addition, the speechreading of words in both silent and noisy (babble background noise and steady-state white noise) conditions was also investigated in above-average speechreaders. The present thesis also compared elderly hearing-aid (EHA) users and elderly normal-hearing (ENH) individuals, in terms of IPs and accuracy in the identification of different types of speech stimuli in silence. Furthermore, the extent to which the identification of auditory speech stimuli was cognitively demanding (for both EHA users and ENH individuals) was investigated by measuring the correlations between IPs and accuracies of different types of speech stimuli and working memory capacity.The results showed that background noise resulted in later IPs (in the auditory and audiovisual modalities) and reduced accuracy (in the auditory, visual, and audiovisual modalities). In visual speech recognition (speechreading), the adverse effect of noise on accuracy was dependent on the type of background noise: babble background noise reduced accuracy but the steady-state white noise did not. In addition, the audiovisual presentation of speech stimuli, relative to auditory presentation, resulted in earlier IPs and more accurate identification of speech stimuli in both silence and noise. In the silent condition, the IPs for perceiving different types of auditory and audiovisual speech stimuli were not correlated with performance on the tests of working memory and attention. In the noise condition, the IPs of consonants and words in the auditory-only condition were significantly correlated with tests for measuring explicit cognitive resources. Furthermore, there was a significant correlation between the results on a test of speech-in-noise performance (the HINT, Hällgren, Larsby, & Arlinger, 2006) and the results on tests of working memory (the reading span test, Rönnberg et al., 1989) and attention (PASAT, Gronwall, 1977). A secondary finding was that ...

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Level Discrimination of Speech Sounds by Hearing-Impaired Individuals With and Without Hearing Amplification

Cited by 12 publications

References 42 publications

The Just-Noticeable Difference in Speech-to-Noise Ratio

The Just-Noticeable Difference in Speech-to-Noise Ratio

Object-based attention modulates the discrimination of level increments in stop-consonant noise bursts

Time is of the essence in speech perception! : Get it fast, or think about it

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