Bertoncini Josiane, Serniclaes Willy, Lorenzi Christian
Université Paris Descartes, Paris, France. [corrected]
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2009 Jun;52(3):682-95. doi: 10.1044/1092-4388(2008/07-0273). Epub 2008 Oct 24.
To investigate the capacity of young children and adults with normal hearing to discriminate speech on the basis of either relatively slow (temporal envelope, E) or fast (temporal fine structure, TFS) auditory cues.
Vowel-consonant-vowel nonsense disyllables were processed to preserve either the E or the TFS information in 16 adjacent frequency bands. The band signals were then recombined and resulting stimuli were presented for discrimination to adults or 5-, 6-, and 7-year-old children using an odd-ball paradigm. Discrimination scores (d') and response latencies were measured in each listener. No training was given to listeners.
Overall, discrimination scores were high (d' >or=1) in all speech-processing conditions, and did not differ across age groups. Overall, and irrespective of age, greater discrimination scores and shorter response latencies were observed for E speech than for TFS speech.
These results suggest that normal-hearing children are able to encode and use E and TFS speech cues at adult levels by the age of 5 years. TFS- and E-coded speech stimuli might therefore prove to be a useful tool for the investigation of the developmental time course of speech perception, and for the early diagnosis of peripheral and central auditory processing disorders.
研究听力正常的幼儿和成人基于相对缓慢（时间包络，E）或快速（时间精细结构，TFS）听觉线索辨别语音的能力。
对元音 - 辅音 - 元音无意义双音节词进行处理，以在16个相邻频带中保留E或TFS信息。然后将这些频带信号重新组合，并使用奇偶数范式将所得刺激呈现给成人或5岁、6岁和7岁儿童进行辨别。测量每个受试者的辨别分数（d'）和反应潜伏期。受试者未接受训练。
总体而言，在所有语音处理条件下，辨别分数都很高（d'≥1），且各年龄组之间没有差异。总体而言，无论年龄大小，与TFS语音相比，E语音的辨别分数更高，反应潜伏期更短。
这些结果表明，听力正常的儿童在5岁时就能以成人水平编码和使用E和TFS语音线索。因此，TFS编码和E编码的语音刺激可能被证明是研究语音感知发展时间进程以及早期诊断外周和中枢听觉处理障碍的有用工具。
