Bureš Zbyněk, Profant Oliver, Sommerhalder Nick, Skarnitzl Radek, Fuksa Jakub, Meyer Martin
Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Third Faculty of Medicine, University Hospital Královské Vinohrady, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic.
Department of Cognitive Systems and Neurosciences, Czech Institute of Informatics, Robotics and Cybernetics, Czech Technical University in Prague, Jugoslávských partyzánů 1580/3, 160 00, Prague 6, Czech Republic.
Eur Arch Otorhinolaryngol. 2024 Mar;281(3):1589-1595. doi: 10.1007/s00405-023-08398-8. Epub 2024 Jan 4.
Previous studies have shown that levels for 50% speech intelligibility in quiet and in noise differ for different languages. Here, we aimed to find out whether these differences may relate to different auditory processing of temporal sound features in different languages, and to determine the influence of tinnitus on speech comprehension in different languages.
We measured speech intelligibility under various conditions (words in quiet, sentences in babble noise, interrupted sentences) along with tone detection thresholds in quiet [PTA] and in noise [PTA], gap detection thresholds [GDT], and detection thresholds for frequency modulation [FMT], and compared them between Czech and Swiss subjects matched in mean age and PTA.
The Swiss subjects exhibited higher speech reception thresholds in quiet, higher threshold speech-to-noise ratio, and shallower slope of performance-intensity function for the words in quiet. Importantly, the intelligibility of temporally gated speech was similar in the Czech and Swiss subjects. The PTA, GDT, and FMT were similar in the two groups. The Czech subjects exhibited correlations of the speech tests with GDT and FMT, which was not the case in the Swiss group. Qualitatively, the results of comparisons between the Swiss and Czech populations were not influenced by presence of subjective tinnitus.
The results support the notion of language-specific differences in speech comprehension which persists also in tinnitus subjects, and indicates different associations with the elementary measures of auditory temporal processing.
先前的研究表明，不同语言在安静环境中和噪声环境下达到50%言语可懂度的水平有所不同。在此，我们旨在探究这些差异是否可能与不同语言中对时间性声音特征的不同听觉处理有关，并确定耳鸣对不同语言中言语理解的影响。
我们测量了各种条件下的言语可懂度（安静环境中的单词、嘈杂噪声中的句子、中断的句子）以及安静环境[纯音听阈（PTA）]和噪声环境[PTA]下的音调检测阈值、间隙检测阈值[GDT]和调频检测阈值[FMT]，并在平均年龄和PTA相匹配的捷克和瑞士受试者之间进行比较。
瑞士受试者在安静环境中表现出更高的言语接受阈值、更高的言语噪声比阈值以及安静环境中单词的性能-强度函数斜率更平缓。重要的是，捷克和瑞士受试者中时间门控言语的可懂度相似。两组的PTA、GDT和FMT相似。捷克受试者的言语测试与GDT和FMT存在相关性，但瑞士组并非如此。定性地说，瑞士和捷克人群之间比较结果不受主观耳鸣存在的影响。
结果支持言语理解中存在语言特异性差异这一观点，这种差异在耳鸣患者中也持续存在，并表明与听觉时间处理的基本测量指标存在不同关联。
