Bent Tessa, Atagi Eriko
Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana 47405, USA.
Volen National Center for Complex Systems, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts 02453, USA.
J Acoust Soc Am. 2015 Dec;138(6):3985-93. doi: 10.1121/1.4938228.
Adult listeners' word recognition is remarkably robust under a variety of adverse listening conditions. However, the combination of two simultaneous listening challenges (e.g., nonnative speaker in noise) can cause significant word recognition decrements. This study investigated how talker-related (native vs nonnative) and environment-related (noise vs quiet) adverse conditions impact children's and adults' word recognition. Five- and six-year-old children and adults identified sentences produced by one native and one nonnative talker in both quiet and noise-added conditions. Children's word recognition declined significantly more than adults' in conditions with one source of listening adversity (i.e., native speaker in noise or nonnative speaker in quiet). Children's performance when the listening challenges were combined (nonnative talker in noise) was particularly poor. Immature speech-in-noise perception may be a result of children's difficulties with signal segregation or selective attention. In contrast, the explanation for children's difficulty in the mapping of unfamiliar pronunciations to known words in quiet listening conditions must rest on children's limited cognitive or linguistic skills and experiences. These results demonstrate that children's word recognition abilities under both environmental- and talker-related adversity are still developing in the early school-age years.
在各种不利的听力条件下，成年听众的单词识别能力非常强大。然而，两种同时存在的听力挑战（例如，嘈杂环境中的非母语者）相结合，可能会导致单词识别能力显著下降。本研究调查了与说话者相关的（母语者与非母语者）和与环境相关的（嘈杂与安静）不利条件如何影响儿童和成人的单词识别。五岁和六岁的儿童以及成年人在安静和添加噪音的条件下，识别由一名母语者和一名非母语者说出的句子。在存在一种听力不利因素的情况下（即嘈杂环境中的母语者或安静环境中的非母语者），儿童的单词识别能力下降幅度明显大于成年人。当听力挑战相结合时（嘈杂环境中的非母语者），儿童的表现尤其差。嘈杂环境中言语感知不成熟可能是由于儿童在信号分离或选择性注意方面存在困难。相比之下，对于儿童在安静听力条件下将不熟悉的发音映射到已知单词时遇到困难的解释，必须基于儿童有限的认知或语言技能及经验。这些结果表明，在与环境和说话者相关的不利条件下，儿童的单词识别能力在学龄早期仍在发展。
