Stelmachowicz Patricia G, Nishi Kanae, Choi Sangsook, Lewis Dawna E, Hoover Brenda M, Dierking Darcia, Lotto Andrew
Boys Town National Research Hospital, 555 N. 30th Street, Omaha, NE 68131, USA.
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2008 Oct;51(5):1369-80. doi: 10.1044/1092-4388(2008/07-0115). Epub 2008 Jul 29.
Recent studies from the authors' laboratory have suggested that reduced audibility in the high frequencies (because of the bandwidth of hearing instruments) may play a role in the delays in phonological development often exhibited by children with hearing impairment. The goal of the current study was to extend previous findings on the effect of bandwidth on fricatives/affricates to more complex stimuli.
Nine fricatives/affricates embedded in 2-syllable nonsense words were filtered at 5 and 10 kHz and presented to normal-hearing 6- to 7-year-olds who repeated words exactly as heard. Responses were recorded for subsequent phonetic and acoustic analyses.
Significant effects of talker gender and bandwidth were found, with better performance for the male talker and the wider bandwidth condition. In contrast to previous studies, relatively small (5%) mean bandwidth effects were observed for /s/ and /z/ spoken by the female talker. Acoustic analyses of stimuli used in the previous and the current studies failed to explain this discrepancy.
It appears likely that a combination of factors (i.e., dynamic cues, prior phonotactic knowledge, and perhaps other unidentified cues to fricative identity) may have facilitated the perception of these complex nonsense words in the current study.
作者实验室最近的研究表明，高频听力下降（由于听力仪器的带宽）可能在听力受损儿童经常出现的语音发展延迟中起作用。本研究的目的是将先前关于带宽对擦音/塞擦音影响的研究结果扩展到更复杂的刺激上。
将九个嵌入双音节无意义单词中的擦音/塞擦音在5千赫和10千赫处进行滤波，并呈现给听力正常的6至7岁儿童，他们按听到的原样重复单词。记录反应以便后续进行语音和声学分析。
发现了说话者性别和带宽的显著影响，男性说话者和较宽带宽条件下的表现更好。与先前的研究相反，女性说话者发出的/s/和/z/的平均带宽效应相对较小（5%）。对先前研究和当前研究中使用的刺激进行的声学分析未能解释这种差异。
在当前研究中，似乎多种因素（即动态线索、先前的音位组合知识以及可能其他未识别的擦音识别线索）的组合可能有助于对这些复杂无意义单词的感知。
