The Bionics Institute, 384-388 Albert St, East Melbourne, VIC, 3002, Australia.
Department of Medical Bionics, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, 3010, Australia.
Sci Rep. 2021 Dec 14;11(1):24006. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-03595-z.
Speech detection and discrimination ability are important measures of hearing ability that may inform crucial audiological intervention decisions for individuals with a hearing impairment. However, behavioral assessment of speech discrimination can be difficult and inaccurate in infants, prompting the need for an objective measure of speech detection and discrimination ability. In this study, the authors used functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) as the objective measure. Twenty-three infants, 2 to 10 months of age participated, all of whom had passed newborn hearing screening or diagnostic audiology testing. They were presented with speech tokens at a comfortable listening level in a natural sleep state using a habituation/dishabituation paradigm. The authors hypothesized that fNIRS responses to speech token detection as well as speech token contrast discrimination could be measured in individual infants. The authors found significant fNIRS responses to speech detection in 87% of tested infants (false positive rate 0%), as well as to speech discrimination in 35% of tested infants (false positive rate 9%). The results show initial promise for the use of fNIRS as an objective clinical tool for measuring infant speech detection and discrimination ability; the authors highlight the further optimizations of test procedures and analysis techniques that would be required to improve accuracy and reliability to levels needed for clinical decision-making.
言语察觉和辨别能力是听力能力的重要衡量指标，可能为听力障碍个体的关键听力学干预决策提供信息。然而，婴幼儿言语辨别行为评估可能较为困难且不够准确，这促使我们需要一种客观的言语察觉和辨别能力测量方法。在本研究中，作者使用了功能近红外光谱（fNIRS）作为客观测量方法。23 名 2 至 10 个月大的婴儿参与了研究，他们均通过了新生儿听力筛查或诊断性听力学测试。在自然睡眠状态下，使用习惯化/去习惯化范式，以舒适的听力水平向婴儿呈现言语声。作者假设可以在个体婴儿中测量到言语声察觉和对比辨别任务的 fNIRS 反应。作者发现，87%的受试婴儿对言语察觉有显著的 fNIRS 反应（假阳性率为 0%），35%的受试婴儿对言语辨别有显著的 fNIRS 反应（假阳性率为 9%）。研究结果初步表明，fNIRS 可作为一种客观的临床工具，用于测量婴幼儿的言语察觉和辨别能力；作者强调需要进一步优化测试程序和分析技术，以提高准确性和可靠性，使其达到临床决策所需的水平。
