Yuen Kevin C P, Yuan Meng
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2014 Oct;57(5):2005-23. doi: 10.1044/2014_JSLHR-H-13-0060.
This study investigated the development of spatial release from masking in children using closed-set Mandarin disyllabic words and monosyllabic words carrying lexical tones as test stimuli and speech spectrum-weighted noise as a masker.
Twenty-six children ages 4-9 years and 12 adults, all with normal hearing, participated in speech recognition tests under 2 conditions: (a) speech and noise spatially mixed and presented from the front (NF), and (b) speech presented from the front with noise spatially separated and presented from the side (NS) with different signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). Performance-SNR psychometric functions were obtained that generated the SNR for a 50% correct score (SNR-50%) as the outcome measure.
In the child participants, SNR-50% improved with age in NS but not NF. The difference in SNR-50% between NS and NF-the spatial release from masking (SRM)-increased with age with an average improvement of 0.1-0.15 dB per month.
SRM has a long developmental time, at least up to 9 years of age, which is significantly longer than some previous developmental studies have suggested. The child participants had not yet reached the adult SRM performance level. SRM is a potential clinical measure to reflect the maturation of spatial auditory processing.
本研究使用带声调的汉语双音节词和单音节词作为测试刺激，以语音频谱加权噪声作为掩蔽声，调查儿童在掩蔽条件下空间释放效应的发展情况。
26名4至9岁儿童和12名听力正常的成年人参与了两种条件下的言语识别测试：（a）语音和噪声在空间上混合并从前方呈现（NF），以及（b）语音从前方呈现，噪声在空间上分离并从侧面呈现（NS），且具有不同的信噪比（SNR）。获得了性能-信噪比心理测量函数，将50%正确得分时的信噪比（SNR-50%）作为结果指标。
在儿童参与者中，NS条件下的SNR-50%随年龄增长而提高，但NF条件下没有。NS和NF之间的SNR-50%差异——空间掩蔽释放效应（SRM）——随年龄增长而增加，平均每月提高0.1-0.15分贝。
SRM有很长的发展时间，至少到9岁，这比之前一些发展研究表明的时间长得多。儿童参与者尚未达到成人SRM的表现水平。SRM是反映空间听觉处理成熟度的一种潜在临床指标。
