Bent Tessa, Baese-Berk Melissa, Puckett Brian, Ryherd Erica, Perry Sydney, Manley Natalie A
Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, Indiana University, Tessa Bent, 2631 E. Discovery Parkway, Bloomington, IN, 47408, USA.
Department of Linguistics, University of Chicago, Chicago, USA.
Cogn Res Princ Implic. 2024 Dec 5;9(1):79. doi: 10.1186/s41235-024-00606-1.
Word identification accuracy is modulated by many factors including linguistic characteristics of words (frequent vs. infrequent), listening environment (noisy vs. quiet), and listener-related differences (older vs. younger). Nearly, all studies investigating these factors use high-familiarity words and noise signals that are either energetic maskers (e.g., white noise) or informational maskers composed of competing talkers (e.g., multitalker babble). Here, we expand on these findings by examining younger and older listeners' speech-in-noise perception for words varying in both frequency and familiarity within a simulated hospital noise that has important non-speech information. The method was inspired by the real-world challenges aging patients can face in understanding less familiar medical terminology used by healthcare professionals in noisy hospital environments. Word familiarity data from older and young adults were collected for 800 medically related terms. Familiarity ratings were highly correlated between the two age groups. Older adults' transcription accuracy for sentences with medical terminology that vary in their familiarity and frequency was assessed across four listening conditions: hospital noise, speech-shaped noise, amplitude-modulated speech-shaped noise, and quiet. Listeners were less accurate in noise conditions than in a quiet condition and were more impacted by hospital noise than either speech-shaped noise. Sentences with low-familiarity and low-frequency medical words combined with hospital noise were particularly detrimental for older adults compared to younger adults. The results impact our theoretical understanding of speech perception in noise and highlight real-world consequences of older adults' difficulties with speech-in-noise and specifically noise containing competing, non-speech information.
单词识别准确率受到多种因素的调节，包括单词的语言特征（高频与低频）、听力环境（嘈杂与安静）以及与听众相关的差异（年长与年轻）。几乎所有研究这些因素的实验都使用高熟悉度的单词以及噪声信号，这些噪声信号要么是能量掩蔽器（如白噪声），要么是由竞争说话者组成的信息掩蔽器（如多说话者嘈杂声）。在此，我们通过研究年轻和年长听众在包含重要非语音信息的模拟医院噪声中，对频率和熟悉度各异的单词的噪声中语音感知能力，拓展了这些研究结果。该方法的灵感来源于老年患者在嘈杂的医院环境中理解医护人员使用的不太熟悉的医学术语时可能面临的现实挑战。我们收集了800个医学相关术语的老年和年轻成年人的单词熟悉度数据。两个年龄组之间的熟悉度评分高度相关。我们在四种听力条件下评估了老年人对熟悉度和频率不同的医学术语句子的转录准确率：医院噪声、语音形状噪声、调幅语音形状噪声和安静环境。听众在噪声环境中的准确率低于安静环境，且相比语音形状噪声，医院噪声对他们的影响更大。与年轻人相比，包含低熟悉度和低频医学单词的句子加上医院噪声对老年人的影响尤为不利。这些结果影响了我们对噪声中语音感知的理论理解，并突出了老年人在噪声中语音理解困难，特别是包含竞争非语音信息的噪声所带来的现实后果。
