Phonetic identification by elderly normal and hearing-impaired listeners

Dorman, Michael F.; Marton, KI; Hannley, Maureen; Lindholm, Julie Mapes

doi:10.1121/1.391885

Cited by 60 publications

(54 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…In agreement with the findings of Dorman and his colleagues (Dorman et al, 1988;Dorman et al, 1985), variation in frication duration alone was sufficient to distinguish voiceless affricates from fricatives at both rise-time values. This finding strongly suggests that earlier results attributed to variation in rise time (see, e.g., Cutting & Rosner, 1974;Gerstman, 1957;Howell & Rosen, 1983) were, in fact, due primarily to frication duration.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 79%

“…Longer rise times led to more 1/al responses for both frication-duration series [F(I,7) = 6.81, P = .0350, short-duration series; In Experiment 2, frication duration was varied while rise time was held constant. Similar stimuli, varying from chop to shop have previously been used by Dorman and his colleagues (Dorman, Hannley, McCandless, & Smith, 1988;Dorman, Marton, & Hannley, 1985). We designed this experiment, first, to replicate their finding that frication duration alone can distinguish ItfI from IfI, and second, to examine the possible combined effects of rise time and frication duration on that distinction.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Amplitude rise time and the perception of the voiceless affricate/fricative distinction

Kluender

Walsh

1992

Perception & Psychophysics

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Variation of amplitude envelope at stimulus onset has been considered to be of primary importance for distinguishing voiceless affricates from fricatives (e.g., ItII and IIf). In earlier perceptual experiments, however, variation in amplitude rise time was confounded with variation in frication duration. In two experiments, these variables were independently manipulated, and their individual and combined effects for perception of Itf/ and III were examined. Variation in amplitude rise time alone was not sufficient to signal the voiceless affricate/fricative contrast in these experiments, but variation in frication duration alone was sufficient.The first acoustic and perceptual analyses involving the affricate/fricative distinction were carried out at Haskins Laboratories over 30 years ago. Perhaps the most complete and informative of these early studies was the dissertation of L. J. Gerstman (1957). His acoustic measurements showed that the production of the affricates Itfl and Id'!J, as in chop and job, results in shorter amplitude rise times and shorter durations of fricative noise than does the production of the fricatives IfI and 131, as in sJwp and azure. Gerstman also evaluated the effects of rise time and frication duration on perception of affricates and fricatives. His results led him to conclude that "the fricativeaffricate distinction appears to depend upon the rate at which the frictional energy grows. An abrupt onset is heard as an affricate, a smooth onset is heard as a fricative" (p. 118). Although this dissertation was never published, it has served as the predecessor to a number of studies on the production and perception of voiceless affricates and fricatives, and the perceptual salience of other acoustic properties such as preceding closure silence and release burst have also been demonstrated (e

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 79%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Amplitude rise time and the perception of the voiceless affricate/fricative distinction

Kluender

Walsh

1992

Perception & Psychophysics

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“…Generally, as the silence duration is decreased, listeners become less accurate at labeling plosives on a voicing continuum (Lisker, 1957). Some listeners with hearing loss require abnormally long silence duration to accurately perceive voicing of plosives when consonants occur in final or medial positions compared to listeners with normal hearing (Cazals & Palis, 1991;Cazals, 1994;Dorman et al, 1985b). Longer recovery time from forward masking for listeners with hearing loss has been proposed as an explanation for these differences between listeners with and without hearing loss (Cazals & Palis, 1991).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…A number of studies have examined the influence of silence duration on the perception of intervocalic stop consonants in listeners with and without sensorineural hearing loss. Generally, as the silence duration is decreased, listeners become less accurate at labeling plosives on a voicing continuum (Lisker, 1957 (Cazals & Palis, 1991;Cazals, 1994;Dorman et al, 1985b). Longer recovery time from forward masking for listeners with hearing loss has been proposed as an explanation for these differences between listeners with and without hearing loss (Cazals & Palis, 1991).…”

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confidence: 99%

Temporal Intraspeech Masking of Plosive Bursts: Effects of Hearing Loss and Frequency Shaping

Mackersie

2007

J Speech Lang Hear Res

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PURPOSE-The purposes were 1) to compare masking of consonant bursts by adjacent vowels for listeners with and without hearing loss and 2) to determine the extent to which the "temporal intraspeech masking" can be reduced by a simulated hearing aid frequency-response shaping.METHOD-Fourteen adults with sensorineural hearing loss and six with normal hearing served as participants. Seven of the participants with hearing loss had flat/gradually sloping audiograms and seven had steeply sloping losses. Stimuli consisted of three consonant bursts (/t/, /p/, /k/) presented in isolation and in vowel-consonant-vowel combinations using the vowel /a/ with formant transition information removed. Normal-hearing listeners were tested using unfiltered stimuli. Listeners with hearing loss were tested using unfiltered stimuli and stimuli filtered to approximate a hearing aid frequency response prescribed by NAL-R. All listeners were tested under earphones at the most comfortable level for the vowel stimulus. Temporal intra-speech masking was quantified as the threshold shift produced by the adjacent vowels.RESULTS-Average intra-speech masking for listeners with steeply sloping hearing loss was significantly higher than that of normal-hearing listeners and those with flat/gradually sloping losses. Greater intra-speech masking was observed for /t/ and /p/ than for /k/. On average, frequency shaping significantly reduced the amount of intra-speech masking for listeners with steeply sloping hearing losses. Even with appropriate amplification/spectral shaping, however, temporal intra-speech masking remained greater than normal for several individuals.CONCLUSIONS-Finding suggest that some individuals with steeply sloping losses may need additional signal processing to supplement frequency-shaping in order to overcome the effect of temporal intra-speech masking.Intra-speech masking refers to the interference in the perception of speech cues by components of the speech signal itself. Intra-speech masking has typically been examined using synthesized vowels by measuring the perception of the second formant (F2) with reductions in the level of the first formant (F1) (Danaher et al., 1973;Van Tasell, 1980;Dorman et al., 1985a;Summers & Leek, 1997). Several of these studies demonstrated that attenuation of F1 can improve the audibility and discriminability of F2 transitions (Hannley & Dorman, 1983;Summers & Leek, 1997;Van Tasell, 1980). The studies noted above examined simultaneous intra-speech masking, that is, masking that occurs within simultaneous components of a speech signal. There is some evidence to suggest, however, that temporal masking between sequential speech cues can also influence perception. A number of studies have examined the influence of silence duration on the perception of intervocalic stop consonants in listeners with and without sensorineural hearing loss. Generally, as the silence duration is decreased, listeners become less accurate at labeling plosives on a voicing continuum (Lisker, 1957 (Cazals & Palis, 1...

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“…formant transitions are difficult to discriminate, contributing to a decline in speech processing (Blumstein and Stevens 1979;Dorman et al 1985;Dubno et al 1989;Gordon-Salant et al 2007;Zeng and Turner 1990). Hearing aids amplify sounds but do not necessarily improve speech recognition (Hogan and Turner 1998), suggesting deterioration of central spectrotemporal processing.…”

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confidence: 99%

Altered cortical spectrotemporal processing with age-related hearing loss

Trujillo

Razak

2013

Journal of Neurophysiology

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Trujillo M, Razak KA. Altered cortical spectrotemporal processing with age-related hearing loss. J Neurophysiol 110: 2873-2886. First published September 25, 2013 doi:10.1152/jn.00423.2013.-Presbycusis (age-related hearing loss) is a prevalent disability associated with aging that impairs spectrotemporal processing, but the mechanisms of such changes remain unclear. The goal of this study was to quantify cortical responses to frequency-modulated (FM) sweeps in a mouse model of presbycusis. Previous studies showed that cortical neurons in young mice are selective for the rate of frequency change in FM sweeps. Here single-unit data on cortical selectivity and response variability to FM sweeps of either direction and different rates (0.08 -20 kHz/ms) were compared across young (1-3 mo), middle-aged (6 -8 mo), and old (14 -20 mo) groups. Three main findings are reported. First, there is a reduction in FM rate selectivity in the old group. Second, there is a slowing of the sweep rates at which neurons likely provide best detection and discrimination of sweep rates. Third, there is an increase in trial-to-trial variability in the magnitude and timing of spikes in response to sweeps. These changes were only observed in neurons that were selective for the fast or intermediate range of sweep rates and not in neurons that preferred slow sweeps or were nonselective. Increased variability of response magnitude, but not changes in temporal fidelity or selectivity, was seen even in the middle-aged group. The results show that spectrotemporal processing becomes slow and noisy with presbycusis in specific types of neurons, suggesting receptive field mechanisms that are altered. These data suggest neural correlates of presbycusis-related reduction in the ability of humans to process rapid spectrotemporal changes.

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Phonetic identification by elderly normal and hearing-impaired listeners

Cited by 60 publications

References 17 publications

Amplitude rise time and the perception of the voiceless affricate/fricative distinction

Amplitude rise time and the perception of the voiceless affricate/fricative distinction

Temporal Intraspeech Masking of Plosive Bursts: Effects of Hearing Loss and Frequency Shaping

Altered cortical spectrotemporal processing with age-related hearing loss

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