Tao Duo-Duo, Fan Yuhui, Galvin John J, Liu Ji-Sheng, Fu Qian-Jie
Department of Ear, Nose, and Throat, The First Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University, Suzhou, China.
Center for Hearing Devices, House Institute Foundation, Los Angeles, California, USA.
Ear Hear. 2025;46(4):1085-1094. doi: 10.1097/AUD.0000000000001655. Epub 2025 Mar 18.
Speech perception develops during childhood, matures in early adulthood, and declines in old age. Everyday listening environments often contain competing sounds that may interfere with the perception of the signal of interest. With competing speech, listeners often experience informational masking, where the intelligibility and acoustic characteristics (e.g., talker sex differences) of the maskers interfere with understanding of target speech. Across the lifespan, utilization of segregation cues in competing speech is not well understood. Furthermore, there is a dearth of research regarding speech-in-speech recognition across the lifespan in speakers of tonal languages such as Mandarin Chinese.
Speech recognition thresholds (SRTs) were measured in listeners with age-adjusted normal hearing; the age range of participants was 5 to 74 years old. All participants were native speakers of Mandarin Chinese. SRTs were measured in the presence of two-talker Forward or Reverse speech maskers where the masker sex was the same as or different from the target.
In general, SRTs were highest (poorest) with the Forward same-sex maskers and lowest (best) with the Reverse different-sex maskers. SRT data were analyzed for 5 age groups: child (5 to 9 years), youth (10 to 17 years), adult (18 to 39 years), middle-aged (40 to 59 years), and elderly (60 to 74 years). Overall, SRTs were significantly higher for the child group than for the youth, adult, middle-aged, and elderly groups ( p < 0.05), and significantly higher for the elderly than for the adult group ( p < 0.05). There was a significant interaction among age group, speech direction, and talker sex cues, where SRTs were significantly higher for Forward than for Reverse speech, and significantly higher for same-sex than for different-sex maskers for all age groups ( p < 0.05), except for the child group.
Consistent with previous studies with non-tonal language speakers, the present SRTs with tonal language speakers were best in the adult group and poorest in the child and elderly groups. The child and youth groups demonstrated greater masking release with Reverse speech than with different-sex maskers, while the elderly group exhibited greater release with the different-sex maskers than with Reverse speech. This pattern of results may reflect developmental effects on utilization of talker sex cues in children; in older adults, enhanced top-down processes may compensate for the age-related declines in processing of temporal envelope and temporal fine structure information.
言语感知在儿童期发展，在成年早期成熟，而在老年期衰退。日常聆听环境中常常包含有竞争性声音，这些声音可能会干扰对目标信号的感知。在有竞争性言语的情况下，聆听者常常会经历信息掩蔽，即掩蔽声的可懂度和声学特征（如说话者的性别差异）会干扰对目标言语的理解。在整个生命周期中，对于竞争性言语中分离线索的利用情况尚未得到充分理解。此外，对于像汉语普通话这样的声调语言使用者在整个生命周期内的言语中言语识别的研究也很匮乏。
在年龄校正听力正常的聆听者中测量言语识别阈值（SRT）；参与者的年龄范围为5至74岁。所有参与者均为汉语普通话母语者。在有两个说话者的正向或反向言语掩蔽声存在的情况下测量SRT，其中掩蔽声的性别与目标相同或不同。
总体而言，正向同性掩蔽声条件下的SRT最高（最差），反向异性掩蔽声条件下的SRT最低（最好）。对5个年龄组的SRT数据进行了分析：儿童组（5至9岁）、青少年组（10至17岁）、成年组（18至39岁）、中年组（40至59岁）和老年组（60至74岁）。总体而言，儿童组的SRT显著高于青少年组、成年组、中年组和老年组（p < 0.05），老年组的SRT显著高于成年组（p < 0.05）。年龄组、言语方向和说话者性别线索之间存在显著交互作用，除儿童组外，所有年龄组正向言语的SRT均显著高于反向言语，同性掩蔽声的SRT均显著高于异性掩蔽声（p < 0.05）。
与之前对非声调语言使用者的研究一致，本研究中声调语言使用者的SRT在成年组中最佳，在儿童组和老年组中最差。儿童组和青少年组在反向言语条件下比在异性掩蔽声条件下表现出更大的掩蔽解除，而老年组在异性掩蔽声条件下比在反向言语条件下表现出更大的掩蔽解除。这种结果模式可能反映了儿童期对说话者性别线索利用的发育影响；在老年人中，增强的自上而下加工过程可能会弥补与年龄相关的时间包络和时间精细结构信息加工能力的下降。
