Department of Speech and Hearing Science, The Ohio State University, Columbus.
Department of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery, The Ohio State University, Columbus.
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2022 Sep 12;65(9):3548-3565. doi: 10.1044/2022_JSLHR-22-00075. Epub 2022 Aug 16.
A dual-task paradigm was implemented to investigate how noise type and sentence context may interact with age and hearing loss to impact word recall during speech recognition.
Three noise types with varying degrees of temporal/spectrotemporal modulation were used: speech-shaped noise, speech-modulated noise, and three-talker babble. Participant groups included younger listeners with normal hearing (NH), older listeners with near-normal hearing, and older listeners with sensorineural hearing loss. An adaptive measure was used to establish the signal-to-noise ratio approximating 70% sentence recognition for each participant in each noise type. A word-recall task was then implemented while matching speech-recognition performance across noise types and participant groups. Random-intercept linear mixed-effects models were used to determine the effects of and interactions between noise type, sentence context, and participant group on word recall.
The results suggest that noise type does not significantly impact word recall when word-recognition performance is controlled. When data from noise types were pooled and compared with quiet, and recall was assessed: older listeners with near-normal hearing performed well when either quiet backgrounds or high sentence context (or both) were present, but older listeners with hearing loss performed well only when both quiet backgrounds and high sentence context were present. Younger listeners with NH were robust to the detrimental effects of noise and low context.
The general presence of noise has the potential to decrease word recall, but type of noise does not appear to significantly impact this observation when overall task difficulty is controlled. The presence of noise as well as deficits related to age and/or hearing loss appear to limit the availability of cognitive processing resources available for working memory during conversation in difficult listening environments. The conversation environments that impact these resources appear to differ depending on age and/or hearing status.
采用双任务范式研究噪声类型和句子语境如何与年龄和听力损失相互作用，从而影响言语识别过程中的单词回忆。
使用三种具有不同时频调制程度的噪声类型：语音噪声、语音调制噪声和三人闲聊噪声。参与者群体包括听力正常的年轻听者、接近正常听力的老年听者和感音神经性听力损失的老年听者。使用自适应测量方法为每个参与者在每种噪声类型中建立接近 70%句子识别的信噪比。然后在匹配噪声类型和参与者群体的言语识别性能的同时实施单词回忆任务。随机截距线性混合效应模型用于确定噪声类型、句子语境和参与者群体对单词回忆的影响和相互作用。
结果表明，当控制单词识别性能时，噪声类型不会显著影响单词回忆。当将噪声类型的数据汇总并与安静背景下的数据进行比较，并评估回忆时：接近正常听力的老年听者在安静背景或高句子语境（或两者兼有）存在时表现良好，但听力损失的老年听者只有在安静背景和高句子语境都存在时表现良好。听力正常的年轻听者对噪声和低语境的有害影响具有很强的抵抗力。
噪声的普遍存在有可能降低单词回忆，但当整体任务难度得到控制时，噪声类型似乎不会显著影响这一观察结果。噪声的存在以及与年龄和/或听力损失相关的缺陷似乎限制了在困难听力环境中进行对话时用于工作记忆的认知处理资源的可用性。影响这些资源的会话环境似乎因年龄和/或听力状况而异。
