Effects of linguistic experience on the ability to benefit from temporal and spectral masker modulation

Calandruccio, Lauren; Buss, Emily; Hall, Joseph W.

doi:10.1121/1.4864785

Cited by 11 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 50 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…For example, cognitive factors such as attention and working memory play a strong role when in listening in noise (Gordon-Salant and Fitzgibbons, 1997; Nahum et al, 2008; Rönnberg et al, 2008). Linguistic experience may influence factors such as informational masking and lexical access of target words (Calandruccio et al, 2014a, 2014b). And despite the demonstrated importance of cognitive and central auditory factors (Anderson et al, 2013b), audiometric acuity is still important, especially developmentally.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Auditory-neurophysiological responses to speech during early childhood: Effects of background noise

White-Schwoch¹,

Davies²,

Thompson³

et al. 2015

Hearing Research

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Early childhood is a critical period of auditory learning, during which children are constantly mapping sounds to meaning. But learning rarely occurs under ideal listening conditions—children are forced to listen against a relentless din. This background noise degrades the neural coding of these critical sounds, in turn interfering with auditory learning. Despite the importance of robust and reliable auditory processing during early childhood, little is known about the neurophysiology underlying speech processing in children so young. To better understand the physiological constraints these adverse listening scenarios impose on speech sound coding during early childhood, auditory-neurophysiological responses were elicited to a consonant-vowel syllable in quiet and background noise in a cohort of typically-developing preschoolers (ages 3–5 yr). Overall, responses were degraded in noise: they were smaller, less stable across trials, slower, and there was poorer coding of spectral content and the temporal envelope. These effects were exacerbated in response to the consonant transition relative to the vowel, suggesting that the neural coding of spectrotemporally-dynamic speech features is more tenuous in noise than the coding of static features—even in children this young. Neural coding of speech temporal fine structure, however, was more resilient to the addition of background noise than coding of temporal envelope information. Taken together, these results demonstrate that noise places a neurophysiological constraint on speech processing during early childhood by causing a breakdown in neural processing of speech acoustics. These results may explain why some listeners have inordinate difficulties understanding speech in noise. Speech-elicited auditory-neurophysiological responses offer objective insight into listening skills during early childhood by reflecting the integrity of neural coding in quiet and noise; this paper documents typical response properties in this age group. These normative metrics may be useful clinically to evaluate auditory processing difficulties during early childhood.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Auditory-neurophysiological responses to speech during early childhood: Effects of background noise

White-Schwoch¹,

Davies²,

Thompson³

et al. 2015

Hearing Research

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…One explanation for the larger masking effect of the stationary masker might be the lower proficiency in the nonnative target in combination with the absence of dips in stationary noise. When the language is nonnative, the importance of phonetic and semantic speech cues is larger than for a native language, probably due to the listeners’ imperfect knowledge in the nonnative language ( Calandruccio, Buss, & Hall, 2014 ). However, the attempt to find such cues in the presence of the steady-state masker appeared to be less successful.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Native and Non-native Speech Perception by Hearing-Impaired Listeners in Noise- and Speech Maskers

et al. 2015

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This study evaluated how hearing-impaired listeners perceive native (Swedish) and nonnative (English) speech in the presence of noise- and speech maskers. Speech reception thresholds were measured for four different masker types for each target language. The maskers consisted of stationary and fluctuating noise and two-talker babble in Swedish and English. Twenty-three hearing-impaired native Swedish listeners participated, aged between 28 and 65 years. The participants also performed cognitive tests of working memory capacity in Swedish and English, nonverbal reasoning, and an English proficiency test. Results indicated that the speech maskers were more interfering than the noise maskers in both target languages. The larger need for phonetic and semantic cues in a nonnative language makes a stationary masker relatively more challenging than a fluctuating-noise masker. Better hearing acuity (pure tone average) was associated with better perception of the target speech in Swedish, and better English proficiency was associated with better speech perception in English. Larger working memory and better pure tone averages were related to the better perception of speech masked with fluctuating noise in the nonnative language. This suggests that both are relevant in highly taxing conditions. A large variance in performance between the listeners was observed, especially for speech perception in the nonnative language.

show abstract

“…They support their hypothesis by demonstrating that if normal-hearing listeners receive speech under conditions that result in higher speech-to-masker ratios at threshold, the listeners’ MMR concomitantly declines. Manipulations that have resulted in altered speech-to-masker ratios at threshold in normal-hearing listeners include varying response set size (Buss et al, 2009; Bernstein, Summers et al, 2012), filtering the speech (Oxenham & Simonson, 2009; Christiansen & Dau, 2012), and testing non-native speakers of the target speech (Nakamura & Gordon-Salant, 2011; Calandruccio et al, 2014). Oxenham and Simonson (2009) pointed out that any manipulation that reduces speech redundancy should result in an increased speech-to-masker ratio at threshold.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modulation masking release using the Brazilian-Portuguese HINT: Psychometric functions and the effect of speech time compression

Grose

Griz

Pacífico

et al. 2015

International Journal of Audiology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Objective The Brazilian-Portuguese Hearing In Noise Test (HINT) was used to investigate the benefit to speech recognition of listening in a fluctuating background. The goal was to determine whether modulation masking release varied as a function of the speech-to-masker ratio at threshold. Speech-to-masker ratio at threshold was manipulated using the novel approach of adjusting the time-compression of the speech. Design Experiment 1 measured performance-intensity functions in both a steady speech-shaped noise masker and a 10-Hz square-wave modulated masker. Experiment 2 measured speech-to-masker ratios at threshold as a function of time-compression of the speech (0, 33, and 50%) in both maskers. Study Sample Participants were normal-hearing adults who were native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese (Experiment 1: N = 10; Experiment 2: N = 30). Results The slope of the performance-intensity function was shallower in the modulated masker than in the steady masker for both words and sentences. Thresholds increased with increasing time-compression in both maskers, but more markedly in the modulated masker, resulting in reduced modulation masking release with increasing time-compression. Conclusions Speech-to-masker ratio at threshold varies with time-compression of speech. The results are relevant to the issue of whether degree of masker modulation benefit depends on speech-to-masker ratio at threshold.

show abstract

Effects of linguistic experience on the ability to benefit from temporal and spectral masker modulation

Cited by 11 publications

References 50 publications

Auditory-neurophysiological responses to speech during early childhood: Effects of background noise

Auditory-neurophysiological responses to speech during early childhood: Effects of background noise

Native and Non-native Speech Perception by Hearing-Impaired Listeners in Noise- and Speech Maskers

Modulation masking release using the Brazilian-Portuguese HINT: Psychometric functions and the effect of speech time compression

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About