In Brief: Does Noise Limit the Learning of Young Listeners?

Larson, George C; Petersen, Brenda

doi:10.1086/461110

Cited by 4 publications

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“…Studies by 46 Schwartz and Goldman (1974), Larson and Petersen (1978) and Smyth (1979) suggest that the ambient noise found in many open classrooms imposes a heavy load on children's auditory systems. An investigation of the performance on this speech-in-noise task by normal young learners would help the educator to realistically determine individual listening abilities in noisy classroom environments and to compensate for this individual ability when necessary.…”

Section: Implications For Future Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Speech intelligibility as a function of the propositionality of background noise

Swanstrom¹

2000

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The purpose of this investigation was to measure the ability of young normal hearing listeners to perceive speech in the presence of a background noise which varies in the relative intensity of its semantic content. The Speech Perception in Noise test was mixed with a two-component competing noise complex in which the narrativeto-speech noise ratio varied in 2 dB increments from -2 dB Na/SpN to +8 dB Na/SpN. These stimuli were presented at an overall +8 dB s 1 ignal-to-noise ratio to thirty young normal hearing adults through the soundf ield system. The differences between the mean error scores and standard deviations for the low predictability sentences were found to be statistically significant at all Na/SpN ratios.No main effect was observed for the Na/SpN ratios on the high predictability sentences. Significant differences were also observed between the mean error scores and standard deviations of HP and LP pairs at each Na/SpN ratio. These data further revealed a systematic increase in LP mean error scores and standard deviations as a result of linear increases in the Na/SpN ratio.These results suggest that semantically loaded competing noise significantly influences the perception of primary messages as a direct function of the competition ratio. Keith and Talis, 1970;Thornton and Raffin, 1978). In addition, the evaluation of hearing aid performance is frequently based on comparisons between speech discrimination scores (Keith and Talis, 1972).To fulfill these objectives, the ideal clinical speech discrimination test is one which is sensitive to any deviations from normal speech discrimination ability (Lovrinic, Burgi and Curry, 1968 (Egan, 1948).Monosyllabic lists, however, may not adequately represent conversational speech insofar as they do not include such cues as word predictability, accent, stress, voice quality, duration, and intonation provided in normal speech (Duffy and Giolas, 1974).Continuous discourse has been suggested as the most logical speech message to use in intelligibility testing (Falconer, 1948;Hirsh, 1952). Accordingly, materials utilizing sentences as the carrier in speech discrimination testing have been Speech-in-Noise TestingThe deleterious effect of various noises on the intelligibility of speech was first sunnnarized by Miller (1947). Miller investigated the effects of tones, music, noise (FM and white), and voices at several signal-to-noise ratios and concluded that the greatest interference with vocal communication is produced by an uninterrupted noise which provides a relatively constant speech-to-noise ratio over the entire range of frequencies involved in human speech. Unfortunately, most of the noises we compete with fill this general prescription.In the intital study comparing the masking of speech in form of continuous discourse by white noise, Hawkins and Stevens (1950) reported that the threshold of speech intelligibility was elevated by masking noise similiar to the thresholds for pure tones. Their data revealed that for noise levels below 10 dBSL, the normal thr...

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Section: Implications For Future Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%