An Examination of Speech Recognition in a Modulated Background and of Forward Masking in Younger and Older Listeners

Contact author: René H. Gifford, who is now at the Mayo Clinic, Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Eisenberg 2F, 200 First Street S.W., Rochester, MN 55905. E-mail: gifford.rene{at}mayo.edu . Purpose: To compare speech intelligibility in the presence of a 10-Hz square-wave noise masker in younger an...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of speech, language, and hearing research language, and hearing research, 2007-08, Vol.50 (4), p.857-864
Main Authors: Gifford, Rene H, Bacon, Sid P, Williams, Erica J
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acoustic Stimulation
Acoustics
Adult
Age Differences
Aged
Aging - physiology
Auditory Perception
Auditory Stimuli
Auditory Tests
Auditory Threshold - physiology
Communication Disorders
Comparative analysis
Comparative Testing
Demographic aspects
Ears & hearing
Efficiency
English
Evaluation
Humans
Intelligibility
Matched Groups
Middle Aged
Native Speakers
Noise
Noise barriers
North American English
Older people
Perceptual Masking - physiology
Presbycusis - physiopathology
Recognition (Psychology)
Sentences
Speech
Speech Perception - physiology
Speech, Intelligibility of
Studies
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Summary:Contact author: René H. Gifford, who is now at the Mayo Clinic, Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Eisenberg 2F, 200 First Street S.W., Rochester, MN 55905. E-mail: gifford.rene{at}mayo.edu . Purpose: To compare speech intelligibility in the presence of a 10-Hz square-wave noise masker in younger and older listeners and to relate performance to recovery from forward masking. Method: The signal-to-noise ratio required to achieve 50% sentence identification in the presence of a 10-Hz square-wave noise masker was obtained for each of the 8 younger/older listener pairs. Listeners were matched according to their quiet thresholds for frequencies from 600 to 4800 Hz in octave steps. Forward masking was also measured in 2 younger/older threshold-matched groups for signal delays of 2–40 ms. Results: Older listeners typically required a significantly higher signal-to-noise ratio than younger listeners to achieve 50% correct sentence recognition. This effect may be understood in terms of increased forward-masked thresholds throughout the range of signal delays corresponding to the silent intervals in the modulated noise (e.g.,
ISSN:1092-4388
1558-9102
DOI:10.1044/1092-4388(2007/060)