Henry Belinda A, Turner Christopher W, Behrens Amy
Department of Communicative Disorders, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA.
J Acoust Soc Am. 2005 Aug;118(2):1111-21. doi: 10.1121/1.1944567.
Spectral peak resolution was investigated in normal hearing (NH), hearing impaired (HI), and cochlear implant (CI) listeners. The task involved discriminating between two rippled noise stimuli in which the frequency positions of the log-spaced peaks and valleys were interchanged. The ripple spacing was varied adaptively from 0.13 to 11.31 ripples/octave, and the minimum ripple spacing at which a reversal in peak and trough positions could be detected was determined as the spectral peak resolution threshold for each listener. Spectral peak resolution was best, on average, in NH listeners, poorest in CI listeners, and intermediate for HI listeners. There was a significant relationship between spectral peak resolution and both vowel and consonant recognition in quiet across the three listener groups. The results indicate that the degree of spectral peak resolution required for accurate vowel and consonant recognition in quiet backgrounds is around 4 ripples/octave, and that spectral peak resolution poorer than around 1-2 ripples/octave may result in highly degraded speech recognition. These results suggest that efforts to improve spectral peak resolution for HI and CI users may lead to improved speech recognition.
对听力正常（NH）、听力受损（HI）和人工耳蜗（CI）使用者的频谱峰值分辨率进行了研究。任务包括区分两种波纹噪声刺激，其中对数间隔的峰值和谷值的频率位置相互交换。波纹间距在0.13至11.31波纹/倍频程之间自适应变化，每个受试者能够检测到峰值和谷值位置反转的最小波纹间距被确定为频谱峰值分辨率阈值。平均而言，NH受试者的频谱峰值分辨率最佳，CI受试者最差，HI受试者居中。在这三组受试者中，频谱峰值分辨率与安静环境下的元音和辅音识别之间存在显著关系。结果表明，在安静背景下准确识别元音和辅音所需的频谱峰值分辨率约为4波纹/倍频程，而低于约1-2波纹/倍频程的频谱峰值分辨率可能导致语音识别严重退化。这些结果表明，努力提高HI和CI使用者的频谱峰值分辨率可能会改善语音识别。
