Jean-Uhrmacher-Institute for Clinical ENT-Research, 14309University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany.
Department of Neurology, University Hospital of Cologne, Cologne, Germany.
Trends Hear. 2022 Jan-Dec;26:23312165221111676. doi: 10.1177/23312165221111676.
In cocktail party situations multiple talkers speak simultaneously, which causes listening to be perceptually and cognitively challenging. Such situations can either be static (fixed target talker) or dynamic, meaning the target talker switches occasionally and in a potentially unpredictable way. To shed light on the perceptional and cognitive mechanisms in static and dynamic cocktail party situations, we conducted an analysis of error types that occur during a multi-talker speech recognition test. The error analysis distinguished between misunderstood or omitted words (random errors) and target-masker confusions. To investigate the effects of aging and hearing impairment, we compared data from three listener groups, comprised of young as well as older adults with and without hearing loss. In the static condition, error rates were generally very low, except for the older hearing-impaired listeners. Consistent with the assumption of decreased audibility, they showed a notable amount of random errors. In the dynamic condition, errors increased compared to the static condition, especially immediately following a target talker switch. Those increases were similar for random and confusion errors. The older hearing-impaired listeners showed greater difficulties than the younger adults in trials not preceded by a switch. These results suggest that the load associated with dynamic cocktail party listening affects the ability to focus attention on the talker of interest and the retrieval of words from short-term memory, as indicated by the increased amount of confusion and random errors. This was most pronounced in the older hearing-impaired listeners proposing an interplay of perceptual and cognitive mechanisms.
在鸡尾酒会场景中，多个说话者同时讲话，这使得听力在感知和认知上都具有挑战性。这些情况要么是静态的（固定目标说话者），要么是动态的，这意味着目标说话者偶尔会以潜在不可预测的方式切换。为了阐明静态和动态鸡尾酒会场景中的感知和认知机制，我们对多说话者语音识别测试中出现的错误类型进行了分析。错误分析将混淆或遗漏的单词（随机错误）与目标掩蔽混淆区分开来。为了研究衰老和听力障碍的影响，我们比较了三组听众的数据，这些听众由年轻、年长以及有听力损失和无听力损失的成年人组成。在静态条件下，除了年长的听力受损听众外，错误率通常非常低。与可听度降低的假设一致，他们表现出大量的随机错误。在动态条件下，与静态条件相比，错误增加了，尤其是在目标说话者切换后立即增加。随机错误和混淆错误的增加相似。与年轻成年人相比，在没有切换的情况下，年长的听力受损听众在试验中遇到了更大的困难。这些结果表明，与动态鸡尾酒会聆听相关的负载会影响将注意力集中在感兴趣的说话者上的能力以及从短期记忆中检索单词的能力，这表现为混淆和随机错误的增加。在年长的听力受损听众中，这种情况最为明显，这表明感知和认知机制之间存在相互作用。
