Shen Jing, Souza Pamela E
Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, United States.
Knowles Hearing Center, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, United States.
Front Psychol. 2018 Oct 22;9:1967. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01967. eCollection 2018.
Previous work demonstrated that dynamic pitch (i.e., pitch variation in speech) aids speech recognition in various types of noises. While this finding suggests dynamic pitch enhancement in target speech can benefit speech recognition in noise, it is of importance to know what noise characteristics affect dynamic pitch benefit, and who will benefit from enhanced dynamic pitch cues. Following our recent finding that temporal modulation in noise influences dynamic pitch benefit, we examined the effect of speech masker characteristics on dynamic pitch benefit. Specifically, the first goal of the study was to test the hypothesis that dynamic pitch benefit varies depending on the availability of pitch cues in the masker and the intelligibility of masker. The second goal of this study was to investigate whether older listeners as a group can benefit from dynamic pitch for speech recognition in speech maskers. In addition, individual factors of hearing loss and working memory capacity were examined for their impact on older listeners' dynamic pitch benefit. Twenty-three younger listeners with normal hearing and 37 older listeners with varying levels of hearing sensitivity participated the study, in which speech reception thresholds were measured with sentences in speech maskers. While we did not find an effect of masker characteristics on dynamic pitch benefit, the results showed older listeners can benefit from dynamic pitch for recognizing speech in speech maskers. The data also suggest that among those older listeners with hearing loss, dynamic pitch benefit is stronger for individuals with higher working memory capacity. This can be attributed to their ability to exploit facilitated lexical access in processing of degraded speech signal.
先前的研究表明，动态音高（即语音中的音高变化）有助于在各种类型的噪声中进行语音识别。虽然这一发现表明目标语音中的动态音高增强可以有益于噪声环境下的语音识别，但了解哪些噪声特征会影响动态音高的益处，以及谁会从增强的动态音高线索中受益是很重要的。继我们最近发现噪声中的时间调制会影响动态音高的益处之后，我们研究了语音掩蔽特性对动态音高益处的影响。具体而言，该研究的首要目标是检验以下假设：动态音高的益处会因掩蔽音中音调线索的可用性以及掩蔽音的可懂度而有所不同。本研究的第二个目标是调查老年听众群体是否能从语音掩蔽环境下的语音识别动态音高中受益。此外，还研究了听力损失和工作记忆容量等个体因素对老年听众动态音高益处的影响。23名听力正常的年轻听众和37名听力敏感度不同的老年听众参与了这项研究，研究中通过语音掩蔽环境下的句子测量语音接受阈值。虽然我们没有发现掩蔽特性对动态音高益处有影响，但结果表明老年听众能从语音掩蔽环境下识别语音的动态音高中受益。数据还表明，在那些有听力损失的老年听众中，工作记忆容量较高的个体的动态音高益处更强。这可以归因于他们在处理退化语音信号时利用促进词汇通达的能力。
