Identification of voiceless fricatives was investigated in five subjects having steep hearing losses above 1000 Hz. Sixteen consonant-vowel test syllables were formed by combining each of the voiceless fricatives /s, ∫, f, θ/ with the vowels /i, e, o, u/. The fricatives were identified correctly as follows: /∫/ 87%; /s/ 83%; /f/ 77%; and /θ/ 72%. Subjects showed idiosyncratic fricative confusion patterns. Confusions of the fricatives generally divided into two groups: /s/ and /∫/ were confused one for the other, and /f/ and /θ/ one for the other. There were no vowel confusions; however, the fricatives were more often confused in association with the front vowels, /i/ and /e/, than with the back vowels, /u/ and /o/. Examination of the fricative syllables suggests that low frequency energy, intensity, and duration of the fricative sounds, as well as formant transitions of vowels are available to these subjects to serve as possible cues for voiceless fricative identification.
The Fairbanks Rhyme Test was presented to 12 hearing-impaired children, ages 10–16, to obtain information on the intelligibility of initial consonants in monosyllabic words. All five forms of the rhyme test were presented randomly at five sensation levels (10, 15, 20, 30, and 40 dB) to generate intelligibility gain functions. The degree of amplification produced differential effects on the intelligibility of the 14 initial phonemes studied. Increases in gain substantially improved the intelligibility of the phonemes /d, b, k, p, t/. The phoneme /g/ showed a substantial intelligibility gain but not in a similar fashion to the rest of the stop phonemes. Although the nasal consonants /m/ and /n/ showed equivalent intelligibility gains to that of the stops, they achieved their maximum intelligibility level within the intensity range studied. The phoneme /l/ showed an intelligibility gain function similar to that of the nasal phonemes. The phonemes /s/ and /r/, while highly intelligible throughout all conditions, showed only slight improvement as a function of intensity. Finally, intensity had no systematic effect on the intelligibility of /f/, /h/, and /w/.
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