Bradlow Ann R, Kraus Nina, Hayes Erin
Department of Linguistics, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208-4090, USA.
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2003 Feb;46(1):80-97. doi: 10.1044/1092-4388(2003/007).
This study compared the speech-in-noise perception abilities of children with and without diagnosed learning disabilities (LDs) and investigated whether naturally produced clear speech yields perception benefits for these children. A group of children with LDs (n = 63) and a control group of children without LDs (n = 36) were presented with simple English sentences embedded in noise. Factors that varied within participants were speaking style (conversational vs. clear) and signal-to-noise ratio (-4 dB vs. -8 dB); talker (male vs. female) varied between participants. Results indicated that the group of children with LDs had poorer overall sentence-in-noise perception than the control group. Furthermore, both groups had poorer speech perception with decreasing signal-to-noise ratio; however the children with LDs were more adversely affected by a decreasing signal-to-noise ratio than the control group. Both groups benefited substantially from naturally produced clear speech, and for both groups, the female talker evoked a larger clear speech benefit than the male talker. The clear speech benefit was consistent across groups; required no listener training; and, for a large proportion of the children with LDs, was sufficient to bring their performance within the range of the control group with conversational speech. Moreover, an acoustic comparison of conversational-to-clear speech modifications across the two talkers provided insight into the acoustic-phonetic features of naturally produced clear speech that are most important for promoting intelligibility for this population.
本研究比较了患有和未患有已确诊学习障碍（LDs）的儿童在噪声环境中言语感知能力，并调查了自然产生的清晰言语是否能为这些儿童带来感知优势。向一组患有学习障碍的儿童（n = 63）和一组未患有学习障碍的对照组儿童（n = 36）呈现嵌入噪声中的简单英语句子。参与者内部变化的因素有说话风格（对话式与清晰式）和信噪比（-4 dB与-8 dB）；说话者（男性与女性）在参与者之间有所不同。结果表明，患有学习障碍的儿童组在噪声环境中对句子的整体感知比对照组差。此外，两组的言语感知都随着信噪比的降低而变差；然而，患有学习障碍的儿童比对照组更受信噪比降低的不利影响。两组都从自然产生的清晰言语中受益匪浅，并且对于两组来说，女性说话者比男性说话者引发的清晰言语优势更大。清晰言语优势在各组之间是一致的；不需要听众训练；并且，对于很大一部分患有学习障碍的儿童来说，足以使他们的表现达到对照组在对话式言语时的水平范围内。此外，对两位说话者从对话式到清晰式言语变化的声学比较，为自然产生的清晰言语中对提高该人群可懂度最重要的声学语音特征提供了见解。
