Linguistic Factors Influencing Speech Audiometric Assessment

Abstract

In speech audiometric testing, hearing performance is typically measured by calculating the number of correct repetitions of a speech stimulus. We investigate to what extent the repetition accuracy of Dutch speech stimuli presented against a background noise is influenced by nonauditory processes. We show that variation in verbal repetition accuracy is partially explained by morpholexical and syntactic features of the target language. Verbs, prepositions, conjunctions, determiners, and pronouns yield significantly lower correct repetitions than nouns, adjectives, or adverbs. The reduced repetition performance for verbs and function words is probably best explained by the similarities in the perceptual nature of verbal morphology and function words in Dutch. For sentences, an overall negative effect of syntactic complexity on speech repetition accuracy was found. The lowest number of correct repetitions was obtained with passive sentences, reflecting the cognitive cost of processing a noncanonical sentence structure. Taken together, these findings may have important implications for the audiological practice. In combination with hearing loss, linguistic complexity may increase the cognitive demands to process sentences in noise, leading to suboptimal functional hearing in day-to-day listening situations. Using test sentences with varying degrees of syntactic complexity may therefore provide useful information to measure functional hearing benefits.

Speech understanding in noise in elderly adults: the effect of inhibitory control and syntactic complexity

“…Some previous results for young adults seem to mirror the present pattern: such that subject relative clauses (SR) result in similar perception scores as topic–verb–object sentences (Coene et al . ) or better perception than SVO sentences, in fluctuating, and especially in stationary noise (Uslar et al . : fig.…”

“…For example, an utterance such as 'The message claimed her attention' will be less difficult to process than 'He claims to know her' because in the latter case the object of the claim is an infinitive clause that enlarges the syntactic domain with its own internal clausal structure ('he' and 'her' being respectively the subject and the object of the verbal predicate 'to know'). Syntactic complexity partially erases the positive effects of context on speech understanding when combined with other perceptual challenges, such as speech noise (Coene et al 2016, Uslar et al 2013 or increased presentation speed, especially for older individuals with hearing loss , Uslar et al 2011, Wingfield et al 2006. Perception becomes more difficult in sentences with a non-canonical word order such as passive clauses (e.g., 'Information will be provided tomorrow') or in sentences with more than one possible verb argument structure (e.g., sentences with the verb to send: 'Sheldon sent the letter' and 'Sheldon sent Debbie the letter') (Uslar et al 2011: 623-624).…”

“…Syntactic complexity partially erases the positive effects of context on speech understanding when combined with other perceptual challenges, such as speech noise (Coene et al . , Uslar et al . ) or increased presentation speed, especially for older individuals with hearing loss (Carroll and Ruigendijk , Uslar et al .…”

LiCoS: A New Linguistically Controlled Sentences Test to Assess Functional Hearing Performance

“…Within our own group, we have recently reported important linguistic effects of test stimuli on hearing performance outcomes for the Dutch-speaking area [19]. Using test sentences with varying degrees of linguistic difficulty at the morpholexical and syntactic levels, we have found that sentence repetition accuracy is significantly lower with verbs than with nouns, adjectives, or adverbs, or with syntactically more complex constructions such as passive sentences (e.g., The document has been released into the public domain) or object relative clauses (e.g., I…”