The relationships among pairwise judgments of the quality of connected discourse, pairwise judgments of the relative intelligibility of discourse, and measured intelligibility on a nonsense-syllable test were evaluated under identical conditions of primary talker and competitive babble. Stimuli were processed by eight hearing aids and presented in a repeated-measures design to 12 listeners with sensorineural hearing loss. Results revealed moderately high test-retest reliability for all three experimental conditions. Overall, a noteworthy positive relationship was evident between relative intelligibility judgments and measured phonemic identification, although this relationship varied considerably among individual listeners. The correspondence between quality judgments and relative intelligibility judgments was substantially lower, while the relationship between judgments of quality and phonemic identification scores was negligible, Findings demonstrate the potential importance of instructional set in producing valid judgments of the relative intelligibility of aided speech. The determination of measurement error inherent in pairwise preference data is discussed from the viewpoint of a probabilistic model encompassing a binomial distribution. It is concluded that experimental optimization of the agreement between relative intelligibility judgments and measured intelligibility performance of individual listeners will be required before the pairwise comparison technique can be considered a viable alternative to traditional hearing aid evaluation procedures.
We investigated whether backward and forward speech produce identical masking when the target demanded prolonged or complicated integration. The target signal was a tape recording of continuous discourse with two-digit numbers embedded at 10-sec intervals. This target signal was presented in the presence of eight maskers: (1) two and four talkers speaking continuous discourse containing numbers; (2) two and four talkers speaking continuous discourse not containing numbers; (3) two and four talkers speaking connected discourse that was reproduced backwards; and (4) two and four talkers modulating a filtered noise. The presentation level of the target signal was 60 dB SPL. The intensity of the masker was varied to yield signal-to-competition ratios of −8, −3, +2 and +7 dB. The results suggest that forward speech was the most efficient masker, then backward speech; and finally, the modulated noise was the least efficient masker.
It is well known that the lateralization of an auditory image depends upon the difference in the time of arrival of the signals at the two ears. Based upon modifications of the procedure used by Cherry and Sayers [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 28, 889–895 (1956)], a two-alternative forced-choice experiment was employed to investigate the DL for lateralization of an ongoing speech stimulus. In one of the stimulus intervals the binaural speech signal was presented diotically, and in the other interval interaural time disparities of 0.0, 0.015, 0.030, 0.060, 0.075, 0.090, 0.250, and 1.0 msec were created between the binaural signals. The listener's task was to indicate the interval in which the Δt was present. The results show that listeners were able to detect small interaural time differences with 75% performance being reached at a Δt of 0.021 msec. The data has been plotted in terms of a coherence function for speech which is discussed. [Supported by a grant from NINCDS.]
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