Akeroyd Michael A, Gatehouse Stuart, Blaschke Julia
MRC Institute of Hearing Research (Scottish Section), Glasgow Royal Infirmary, Alexandra Parade, Glasgow, G31 2ER, United Kingdom.
J Acoust Soc Am. 2007 Feb;121(2):1077-89. doi: 10.1121/1.2404927.
This experiment measured the capability of hearing-impaired individuals to discriminate differences in the cues to the distance of spoken sentences. The stimuli were generated synthetically, using a room-image procedure to calculate the direct sound and first 74 reflections for a source placed in a 7 x 9 m room, and then presenting each of those sounds individually through a circular array of 24 loudspeakers. Seventy-seven listeners participated, aged 22-83 years and with hearing levels from -5 to 59 dB HL. In conditions where a substantial change in overall level due to the inverse-square law was available as a cue, the elderly hearing-impaired listeners did not perform any different from control groups. In other conditions where that cue was unavailable (so leaving the direct-to-reverberant relationship as a cue), either because the reverberant field dominated the direct sound or because the overall level had been artificially equalized, hearing-impaired listeners performed worse than controls. There were significant correlations with listeners' self-reported distance capabilities as measured by the "Speech, Spatial, and Qualities of Hearing" questionnaire [S. Gatehouse and W. Noble, Int. J. Audiol. 43, 85-99 (2004)]. The results demonstrate that hearing-impaired listeners show deficits in the ability to use some of the cues which signal auditory distance.
本实验测量了听力受损者辨别口语句子距离线索差异的能力。刺激音是通过合成产生的，采用房间图像程序来计算放置在7×9米房间中的声源的直达声和前74次反射声，然后通过24个扬声器的圆形阵列单独呈现这些声音中的每一个。77名听众参与了实验，年龄在22至83岁之间，听力水平在-5至59分贝听力损失（dB HL）之间。在因平方反比定律导致总声级有显著变化可作为线索的情况下，老年听力受损听众的表现与对照组没有任何差异。在其他该线索不可用的情况下（即仅留下直达声与混响声的关系作为线索），要么是因为混响声场主导了直达声，要么是因为总声级已被人为均衡，听力受损听众的表现比对照组差。这与听众通过“言语、空间和听力质量”问卷所测量的自我报告的距离辨别能力存在显著相关性[S. 盖特豪斯和W. 诺布尔，《国际听力学杂志》43, 85 - 99 (2004)]。结果表明，听力受损听众在利用一些指示听觉距离的线索方面存在能力缺陷。
