Methods of Improving Speech Intelligibility for Listeners with Hearing Resolution Deficit

Abstract

Methods developed for real-time time scale modification (TSM) of speech signal are presented. They are based on the non-uniform, speech rate depended SOLA algorithm (Synchronous Overlap and Add). Influence of the proposed method on the intelligibility of speech was investigated for two separate groups of listeners, i.e. hearing impaired children and elderly listeners. It was shown that for the speech with average rate equal to or higher than 6.48 vowels/s, all of the proposed methods have statistically significant impact on the improvement of speech intelligibility for hearing impaired children with reduced hearing resolution and one of the proposed methods significantly improves comprehension of speech in the group of elderly listeners with reduced hearing resolution.Virtual slideshttp://www.diagnosticpathology.diagnomx.eu/vs/2065486371761991

The intelligibility of interrupted and temporally altered speech: Effects of context, age, and hearing loss

“…The latter finding contradicts the initial expectations of the perceptual benefit for temporally expanded speech, derived from speculation on processing time limitations in some, but not all, past experimental studies (Schmitt and McCroskey, 1981;Schmitt, 1983;Kupryjanow and Chyzewski, 2012;Piquado et al, 2012;Gygi and Shafiro, 2014). It is possible that in older and hearing-impaired listeners, the potential benefit of additional processing time in the temporally expanded conditions of the present study was attenuated by faster memory decay of the partially encoded sensory information in working memory.…”

“…However, studies that have examined the effects of temporally expanded speech have produced mixed results. Some have reported a positive effect of slower speech compared to the original natural tempo (Schmitt and McCroskey, 1981;Schmitt, 1983;Kupryjanow and Chyzewski, 2012;Piquado et al, 2012;Gygi and Shafiro, 2012), while others have reported either no benefit or a decrement in speech perception (GordonSalant and Fitzgibbons, 1997;Nejime and Moore, 1998;Vaughan et al, 2002). Gygi and Shafiro (2014) pointed out that the positive effects of slower speech were found mostly in studies that used cognitively demanding materials or tasks with increased attentional and working-memory load such as when listeners had to pay attention to the speech of two concurrent talkers.…”

Linguagem oral de adolescentes deficientes auditivos: avaliação fonoaudiológica e relato dos professores

“…This shows the difficulties that those students have of dealing with listening information when this is the unique canal of information, the difficulties in narration, argumentation, skills required by this kind os strategy. Impaired individuals, even when using hearing aids, can present difficulties in recognizing and comprehending spoken language 32,33 . Here we emphasize the needing of other abilities, than listening, like the orofacial reading, for example 23 .…”