The role of early and late reflections on spatial release from masking: Effects of age and hearing loss

Abstract

Early reflections have been linked to improved speech intelligibility, while later-arriving reverberant sound has been shown to limit speech understanding. Here, these effects were examined by artificially removing either early reflections or late reflections. Removing late reflections improved performance more for colocated than for spatially separated maskers. Results of a multiple regression analysis suggest that pure-tone average (PTA) is a significant predictor of spatial release from masking (SRM) in all acoustic conditions. Controlling for the effects of PTA, age is a significant predictor of SRM only when early reflections are absent.

Effects of age and hearing loss on perceptual and physiological measures of temporal envelope processing and spatial release from speech-on-speech masking

“…However, listeners with hearing loss tested in that study had substantially greater loss of hearing sensitivity than the older listeners recruited in this study. In addition, reverberation was added to our speech stimuli, possibly shifting the spatial separations corresponding to the trade-off between the dominant roles of age and hearing loss toward larger spatial separations (Srinivasan et al, 2017).…”

Determining the energetic and informational components of speech-on-speech masking in listeners with sensorineural hearing loss

“…There is considerable evidence that sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) adversely affects a listener's ability to hear and understand the speech of one specific talker in the presence of competing talkers. This evidence is varied and consists of subjective reports of the experience of communication difficulty (e.g., Gatehouse and Noble, 2004;Noble and Gatehouse, 2006;Agus et al, 2009) as well as the findings from laboratory-based studies of speech-on-speech (SOS) masking (e.g., Festen and Plomp, 1990;Arbogast et al, 2005;Marrone et al, 2008a,b;Best et al, 2012Best et al, , 2013aGallun et al, 2013;Dawes et al, 2013;Srinivasan et al, 2017;Jakien et al, 2017). Despite this accumulation of evidence, the causes for the difficulties experienced by listeners with SNHL in multiple-talker sound fields remain poorly understood.…”

Impacts of Diabetes, Aging, and Hearing Loss on Speech-on-Speech Masking and Spatial Release in a Large Veteran Cohort

“…This test of speech-on-speech masking and spatial release is based on the work of Gallun et al (2013) and is available in both laboratory and portable formats (Srinivasan et al, 2020). The version tested was the laboratory implementation, described in Srinivasan et al (2016Srinivasan et al ( , 2017. The portable and laboratory versions both employ automated presentation of stimuli and scoring of responses.…”

“…In each trial, one CRM sentence is designated as the target due to the inclusion of the call sign "Charlie," and two masking sentences are randomly chosen with the requirement that all three sentences contain different call signs and key words. Stimuli are presented binaurally over ER-3A insert earphones, and as described in Srinivasan et al (2016Srinivasan et al ( , 2017, a virtual acoustical simulation is created by a convolution with nonindividualized head-related impulse responses. The simulation includes three spatial configurations: (a) colocated, with all three sentences presented at 0°azimuth, and (b and c) spatially separated, with the target CRM sentence at 0°azimuth and the masking sentences at either ±8°azimuth or ±30°azimuth.…”

“…Another important difference between laboratory testing and real-world listening is the presence of reverberation. Marrone et al (2008b) and Srinivasan et al (2017) showed that hearing impairment, but not aging, results in a smaller difference between SRM in reverberant and nonreverberant environments. This suggests that there are cues that are distorted by reverberation to which those with hearing loss are less sensitive.…”