Language and Hearing Center Amsterdam, Free University Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands; The Eargroup, Antwerp, Belgium.
Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
Biomed Res Int. 2016;2016:7249848. doi: 10.1155/2016/7249848. Epub 2016 Oct 18.
In speech audiometric testing, hearing performance is typically measured by calculating the number of correct repetitions of a speech stimulus. We investigate to what extent the repetition accuracy of Dutch speech stimuli presented against a background noise is influenced by nonauditory processes. We show that variation in verbal repetition accuracy is partially explained by morpholexical and syntactic features of the target language. Verbs, prepositions, conjunctions, determiners, and pronouns yield significantly lower correct repetitions than nouns, adjectives, or adverbs. The reduced repetition performance for verbs and function words is probably best explained by the similarities in the perceptual nature of verbal morphology and function words in Dutch. For sentences, an overall negative effect of syntactic complexity on speech repetition accuracy was found. The lowest number of correct repetitions was obtained with passive sentences, reflecting the cognitive cost of processing a noncanonical sentence structure. Taken together, these findings may have important implications for the audiological practice. In combination with hearing loss, linguistic complexity may increase the cognitive demands to process sentences in noise, leading to suboptimal functional hearing in day-to-day listening situations. Using test sentences with varying degrees of syntactic complexity may therefore provide useful information to measure functional hearing benefits.
在言语测听测试中，通常通过计算正确重复言语刺激的次数来衡量听力表现。我们研究了在背景噪声中呈现荷兰语言语刺激时，非听觉过程对重复准确性的影响程度。我们表明，言语重复准确性的变化部分可以通过目标语言的形态和句法特征来解释。动词、介词、连词、限定词和代词的正确重复次数明显低于名词、形容词或副词。动词和功能词的重复表现较差可能最好地解释了荷兰语中言语形态和功能词在感知性质上的相似性。对于句子，发现句法复杂度对言语重复准确性有总体的负面影响。被动句的正确重复次数最少，反映了处理非规范句结构的认知成本。总的来说，这些发现可能对听力学实践具有重要意义。结合听力损失，语言复杂性可能会增加在噪声中处理句子的认知需求，导致在日常听力情况下的功能听力不佳。因此，使用具有不同句法复杂度的测试句子可能会提供有用的信息来衡量功能听力的益处。
