scholarly journals Speech-on-speech Masking with Variable Access to the Linguistic Content of the Masker Speech for Native and Nonnative English Speakers

2014 ◽  
Vol 25 (04) ◽  
pp. 355-366 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren Calandruccio ◽  
Ann R. Bradlow ◽  
Sumitrajit Dhar
Keyword(s):  
Hearing Loss ◽  
Speech Recognition ◽  
Speech Signal ◽  
Mixed Model ◽  
Normal Hearing ◽  
Nonnative English Speakers ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Masking Release ◽  
Accented English ◽  
Competing Speech

Background: Masking release for an English sentence-recognition task in the presence of foreign-accented English speech compared with native-accented English speech was reported in Calandruccio et al (2010a). The masking release appeared to increase as the masker intelligibility decreased. However, it could not be ruled out that spectral differences between the speech maskers were influencing the significant differences observed. Purpose: The purpose of the current experiment was to minimize spectral differences between speech maskers to determine how various amounts of linguistic information within competing speech affect masking release. Research Design: A mixed-model design with within-subject (four two-talker speech maskers) and between-subject (listener group) factors was conducted. Speech maskers included native-accented English speech and high-intelligibility, moderate-intelligibility, and low-intelligibility Mandarin-accented English. Normalizing the long-term average speech spectra of the maskers to each other minimized spectral differences between the masker conditions. Study Sample: Three listener groups were tested, including monolingual English speakers with normal hearing, nonnative English speakers with normal hearing, and monolingual English speakers with hearing loss. The nonnative English speakers were from various native language backgrounds, not including Mandarin (or any other Chinese dialect). Listeners with hearing loss had symmetric mild sloping to moderate sensorineural hearing loss. Data Collection and Analysis: Listeners were asked to repeat back sentences that were presented in the presence of four different two-talker speech maskers. Responses were scored based on the key words within the sentences (100 key words per masker condition). A mixed-model regression analysis was used to analyze the difference in performance scores between the masker conditions and listener groups. Results: Monolingual English speakers with normal hearing benefited when the competing speech signal was foreign accented compared with native accented, allowing for improved speech recognition. Various levels of intelligibility across the foreign-accented speech maskers did not influence results. Neither the nonnative English-speaking listeners with normal hearing nor the monolingual English speakers with hearing loss benefited from masking release when the masker was changed from native-accented to foreign-accented English. Conclusions: Slight modifications between the target and the masker speech allowed monolingual English speakers with normal hearing to improve their recognition of native-accented English, even when the competing speech was highly intelligible. Further research is needed to determine which modifications within the competing speech signal caused the Mandarin-accented English to be less effective with respect to masking. Determining the influences within the competing speech that make it less effective as a masker or determining why monolingual normal-hearing listeners can take advantage of these differences could help improve speech recognition for those with hearing loss in the future.

Speech Recognition in Multitalker Babble Using Digits, Words, and Sentences

2005 ◽  
Vol 16 (09) ◽  
pp. 726-739 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel A. McArdle ◽  
Richard H. Wilson ◽  
Christopher A. Burks
Keyword(s):  
Hearing Loss ◽  
Speech Recognition ◽  
Mixed Model ◽  
Recognition Performance ◽  
Normal Hearing ◽  
Linguistic Complexity ◽  
Item Questionnaire ◽  
The Mean ◽  
Speech Recognition In Noise ◽  
Better Than

The purpose of this mixed model design was to examine recognition performance differences when measuring speech recognition in multitalker babble on listeners with normal hearing (n = 36) and listeners with hearing loss (n = 72) utilizing stimulus of varying linguistic complexity (digits, words, and sentence materials). All listeners were administered two trials of two lists of each material in a descending speech-to-babble ratio. For each of the materials, recognition performances by the listeners with normal hearing were significantly better than the performances by the listeners with hearing loss. The mean separation between groups at the 50% point in signal-to-babble ratio on each of the three materials was ~8 dB. The 50% points for digits were obtained at a significantly lower signal-to-babble ratio than for sentences or words that were equivalent. There were no interlist differences between the two lists for the digits and words, but there was a significant disparity between QuickSIN™ lists for the listeners with hearing loss. A two-item questionnaire was used to obtain a subjective measurement of speech recognition, which showed moderate correlations with objective measures of speech recognition in noise using digits (r = .641), sentences (r = .572), and words (r = .673).

F0 Processing and the Seperation of Competing Speech Signals by Listeners With Normal Hearing and With Hearing Loss

1998 ◽  
Vol 41 (6) ◽  
pp. 1294-1306 ◽  
Author(s):  
Van Summers ◽  
Marjorie R. Leek
Keyword(s):  
Hearing Loss ◽  
Steady State ◽  
Speech Recognition ◽  
Normal Hearing ◽  
Hearing Impaired ◽  
Speech Signals ◽  
Group Level ◽  
Competing Speech

Normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners were tested to determine F0 difference limens for synthetic tokens of 5 steady-state vowels. The same stimuli were then used in a concurrent-vowel labeling task with the F0 difference between concurrent vowels ranging between 0 and 4 semitones. Finally, speech recognition was tested for synthetic sentences in the presence of a competing synthetic voice with the same, a higher, or a lower F0. Normal-hearing listeners and hearing-impaired listeners with small F0-discrimination (ΔF0) thresholds showed improvements in vowel labeling when there were differences in F0 between vowels on the concurrent-vowel task. Impaired listeners with high ΔF0 thresholds did not benefit from F0 differences between vowels. At the group level, normalhearing listeners benefited more than hearing-impaired listeners from F0 differences between competing signals on both the concurrent-vowel and sentence tasks. However, for individual listeners, ΔF0 thresholds and improvements in concurrent-vowel labeling based on F0 differences were only weakly associated with F0-based improvements in performance on the sentence task. For both the concurrent-vowel and sentence tasks, there was evidence that the ability to benefit from F0 differences between competing signals decreases with age.

scholarly journals Tinnitus impairs segregation of competing speech in normal-hearing listeners

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yang Wenyi Liu ◽  
Bing Wang ◽  
Bing Chen ◽  
John J. Galvin ◽  
Qian-Jie Fu
Keyword(s):  
Sex Differences ◽  
Speech Recognition ◽  
Auditory Processing ◽  
Normal Hearing ◽  
Central Auditory Processing ◽  
Informational Masking ◽  
Spatial Cues ◽  
Processing Resources ◽  
Lexical Interference ◽  
Competing Speech

AbstractMany tinnitus patients report difficulties understanding speech in noise or competing talkers, despite having “normal” hearing in terms of audiometric thresholds. The interference caused by tinnitus is more likely central in origin. Release from informational masking (more central in origin) produced by competing speech may further illuminate central interference due to tinnitus. In the present study, masked speech understanding was measured in normal hearing listeners with or without tinnitus. Speech recognition thresholds were measured for target speech in the presence of multi-talker babble or competing speech. For competing speech, speech recognition thresholds were measured for different cue conditions (i.e., with and without target-masker sex differences and/or with and without spatial cues). The present data suggest that tinnitus negatively affected masked speech recognition even in individuals with no measurable hearing loss. Tinnitus severity appeared to especially limit listeners’ ability to segregate competing speech using talker sex differences. The data suggest that increased informational masking via lexical interference may tax tinnitus patients’ central auditory processing resources.

scholarly journals Masking Release in Children and Adults With Hearing Loss When Using Amplification

2016 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 110-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Brennan ◽  
Ryan McCreery ◽  
Judy Kopun ◽  
Dawna Lewis ◽  
Joshua Alexander ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Hearing Loss ◽  
Signal To Noise Ratio ◽  
Hearing Aid ◽  
Normal Hearing ◽  
Noise Masking ◽  
Sentence Recognition ◽  
Hearing Status ◽  
Masking Release ◽  
Adults And Children ◽  
Children With Hearing Loss

Purpose This study compared masking release for adults and children with normal hearing and hearing loss. For the participants with hearing loss, masking release using simulated hearing aid amplification with 2 different compression speeds (slow, fast) was compared. Method Sentence recognition in unmodulated noise was compared with recognition in modulated noise (masking release). Recognition was measured for participants with hearing loss using individualized amplification via the hearing-aid simulator. Results Adults with hearing loss showed greater masking release than the children with hearing loss. Average masking release was small (1 dB) and did not depend on hearing status. Masking release was comparable for slow and fast compression. Conclusions The use of amplification in this study contrasts with previous studies that did not use amplification. The results suggest that when differences in audibility are reduced, participants with hearing loss may be able to take advantage of dips in the noise levels, similar to participants with normal hearing. Although children required a more favorable signal-to-noise ratio than adults for both unmodulated and modulated noise, masking release was not statistically different. However, the ability to detect a difference may have been limited by the small amount of masking release observed.

The Effects of Hearing Loss and Noise Masking on the Masking Release for Speech in Temporally Complex Backgrounds

1998 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 549-563 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sid P. Bacon ◽  
Jane M. Opie ◽  
Danielle Y. Montoya
Keyword(s):  
Hearing Loss ◽  
Steady State ◽  
Sensorineural Hearing Loss ◽  
Pure Tone ◽  
Normal Hearing ◽  
Sensorineural Hearing ◽  
The Other ◽  
Signal To Noise ◽  
Noise Masking ◽  
Masking Release

Speech recognition was measured in three groups of listeners: those with sensorineural hearing loss of (presumably) cochlear origin (HL), those with normal hearing (NH), and those with normal hearing who listened in the presence of a spectrally shaped noise that elevated their pure-tone thresholds to match those of individual listeners in the HL group (NM). Performance was measured in four backgrounds that differed only in their temporal envelope: steady-state (SS) speech-shaped noise, speech-shaped noise modulated by the envelope of multi-talker babble (MT), speech-shaped noise modulated by the envelope of single-talker speech (ST), and speech-shaped noise modulated by a 10-Hz square wave (SQ). Threshold signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) were typically best in the ST and especially the SQ conditions, indicating a masking release in those modulated backgrounds. SNRs in the SS and MT conditions were essentially identical to one another. The masking release was largest in the listeners in the NH group, and it tended to decrease as hearing loss increased. In 5 of the 11 listeners in the HL group, the masking release was nearly identical to that obtained in the NM group matched to those listeners; in the other 6 listeners, the release was smaller than that in the NM group. The reduced masking release was simulated best in those HL listeners for whom the masking release was relatively large. These results suggest that reduced masking release for speech in listeners with sensorineural hearing loss can only sometimes be accounted for entirely by reduced audibility.

Masking of Speech in Young and Elderly Listeners With Hearing Loss

1994 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 655-661 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pamela E. Souza ◽  
Christopher W. Turner
Keyword(s):  
Hearing Loss ◽  
Speech Recognition ◽  
Sensorineural Hearing Loss ◽  
Background Noise ◽  
Normal Hearing ◽  
Sensorineural Hearing ◽  
Masking Noise ◽  
Speech Spectrum ◽  
Specific Factors ◽  
High Pass

This study examined the contributions of various properties of background noise to the speech recognition difficulties experienced by young and elderly listeners with hearing loss. Three groups of subjects participated: young listeners with normal hearing, young listeners with sensorineural hearing loss, and elderly listeners with sensorineural hearing loss. Sensitivity thresholds up to 4000 Hz of the young and elderly groups of listeners with hearing loss were closely matched, and a high-pass masking noise was added to minimize the contributions of high-frequency (above 4000 Hz) thresholds, which were not closely matched. Speech recognition scores for monosyllables were obtained in the high-pass noise alone and in three noise backgrounds. The latter consisted of high-pass noise plus one of three maskers: speechspectrum noise, speech-spectrum noise temporally modulated by the envelope of multi-talker babble, and multi-talker babble. For all conditions, the groups with hearing impairment consistently scored lower than the group with normal hearing. Although there was a trend toward poorer speech-recognition scores as the masker condition more closely resembled the speech babble, the effect of masker condition was not statistically significant. There was no interaction between group and condition, implying that listeners with normal hearing and listeners with hearing loss are affected similarly by the type of background noise when the long-term spectrum of the masker is held constant. A significant effect of age was not observed. In addition, masked thresholds for pure tones in the presence of the speech-spectrum masker were not different for the young and elderly listeners with hearing loss. These results suggest that, for both steady-state and modulated background noises, difficulties in speech recognition for monosyllables are due primarily, and perhaps exclusively, to the presence of sensorineural hearing loss itself, and not to age-specific factors.

The Effect of Noise on Synthetic Sentence Identification

1967 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 859-864 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Speaks ◽  
Jane L. Karmen
Keyword(s):  
Speech Signal ◽  
Noise Level ◽  
Normal Hearing ◽  
Direct Proportion ◽  
Masking Noise ◽  
Competing Speech ◽  
Speech Presentation

The effect of masking noise on identification of synthetic sentences was studied on seven listeners with normal hearing. Performance-intensity (P-I) functions were defined for speech presentation levels ranging from 20 to 70 dB SPL. Noise exerted no appreciable influence on the steepness of the functions. The shift in threshold of identification varied in direct proportion to the overall noise level for noise intensities exceeding 40 dB SPL. Results are compared with the data of Hawkins and Stevens (1950) for thresholds of intelligibility and detectability and contrasted with previously reported results using a competing speech signal.

Selected Cognitive Factors and Speech Recognition Performance Among Young and Elderly Listeners

1997 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 423-431 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandra Gordon-Salant ◽  
Peter J. Fitzgibbons
Keyword(s):  
Hearing Loss ◽  
Speech Recognition ◽  
Recognition Performance ◽  
Speech Rate ◽  
Normal Hearing ◽  
Recall Task ◽  
Cognitive Factors ◽  
Word Recall ◽  
Contextual Cues ◽  
Sentence Recall

The influence of selected cognitive factors on age-related changes in speech recognition was examined by measuring the effects of recall task, speech rate, and availability of contextual cues on recognition performance by young and elderly listeners. Stimuli were low and high context sentences from the R-SPIN test presented at normal and slowed speech rates in noise. Response modes were final word recall and sentence recall. The effects of hearing loss and age were examined by comparing performances of young and elderly listeners with normal hearing and young and elderly listeners with hearing loss. Listeners with hearing loss performed more poorly than listeners with normal hearing in nearly every condition. In addition, elderly listeners exhibited poorer performance than younger listeners on the sentence recall task, but not on the word recall task, indicating that added memory demands have a detrimental effect on elderly listeners' performance. Slowing of speech rate did not have a differential effect on performance of young and elderly listeners. All listeners performed well when stimulus contextual cues were available. Taken together, these results support the notion that the performance of elderly listeners with hearing loss is influenced by a combination of auditory processing factors, memory demands, and speech contextual information.

scholarly journals Comparison of the South African Spondaic and CID W-1 wordlists for measuring speech recognition threshold

2015 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tanya Hanekom ◽  
Maggi Soer ◽  
Lidia Pottas
Keyword(s):  
Hearing Loss ◽  
Speech Recognition ◽  
South African ◽  
Pearson Correlation ◽  
Normal Hearing ◽  
Recognition Threshold ◽  
Home Language ◽  
The South ◽  
South Africans ◽  
English Second Language

Background: The home language of most audiologists in South Africa is either English or Afrikaans, whereas most South Africans speak an African language as their home language. The use of an English wordlist, the South African Spondaic (SAS) wordlist, which is familiar to the English Second Language (ESL) population, was developed by the author for testing the speech recognition threshold (SRT) of ESL speakers. Objectives: The aim of this study was to compare the pure-tone average (PTA)/SRT correlation results of ESL participants when using the SAS wordlist (list A) and the CID W-1 spondaic wordlist (list B – less familiar; list C – more familiar CID W-1 words). Method: A mixed-group correlational, quantitative design was adopted. PTA and SRT measurements were compared for lists A, B and C for 101 (197 ears) ESL participants with normal hearing or a minimal hearing loss (<26 dBHL; mean age 33.3). Results: The Pearson correlation analysis revealed a strong PTA/SRT correlation when using list A (right 0.65; left 0.58) and list C (right 0.63; left 0.56). The use of list B revealed weak correlations (right 0.30; left 0.32). Paired sample t-tests indicated a statistically significantly stronger PTA/SRT correlation when list A was used, rather than list B or list C, at a 95% level of confidence. Conclusions: The use of the SAS wordlist yielded a stronger PTA/SRT correlation than the use of the CID W-1 wordlist, when performing SRT testing on South African ESL speakers with normal hearing, or minimal hearing loss (<26 dBHL).

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document