Gianakas Steven P, Winn Matthew B
Department of Communication Disorders and Sciences, Rush University, Chicago, IL.
Department of Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2025 Apr 8;68(4):2144-2156. doi: 10.1044/2025_JSLHR-24-00184. Epub 2025 Mar 28.
When words are misperceived, listeners can rely on later context to repair an auditory perception, at the cost of increased effort. The current study examines whether the effort to repair a missing word in a sentence is alleviated when the listener has some advance knowledge of what to expect in the sentence.
Sixteen adults with hearing aids and 17 with typical hearing heard sentences with a missing word that was followed by context sufficient to infer what the word was. They repeated the sentences with the missing words repaired. Sentences were preceded by visual text on the screen showing either "XXXX" (unprimed) or a priming word previewing the word that would be masked in the auditory signal. Along with intelligibility measures, pupillometry was used as an index of listening effort over the course of each trial to measure how priming influenced the effort needed to mentally repair a missing word.
When listeners were primed for the word that would need to be repaired in an upcoming sentence, listening effort was reduced, as indicated by pupil size returning more quickly toward baseline after the sentence was heard. Priming reduced the lingering cost of mental repair in both listener groups. For the group with hearing loss, priming also reduced the prevalence of errors on target words and words other than the target word in the sentence, suggesting that priming preserves the cognitive resources needed to process the whole sentence.
These results suggest that listeners with typical hearing and with hearing loss can benefit from priming (advance cueing) during speech recognition, to accurately repair speech and to process the speech less effortfully.
当单词被误听时，听众可以依靠后续语境来修复听觉感知，但这会增加努力程度。本研究旨在探讨当听众对句子中预期出现的内容有一定的先验知识时，修复句子中缺失单词的努力程度是否会减轻。
16名佩戴助听器的成年人和17名听力正常的成年人听取了一些句子，这些句子中有一个缺失的单词，随后是足以推断出该单词的语境。他们在修复缺失单词后重复这些句子。句子之前，屏幕上会显示视觉文本，要么是“XXXX”（无启动提示），要么是一个启动单词，预告在听觉信号中会被掩盖的单词。除了可懂度测量外，瞳孔测量法被用作每次试验过程中听力努力程度的指标，以测量启动提示如何影响在脑海中修复缺失单词所需的努力。
当听众在即将听到的句子中被给予需要修复的单词的启动提示时，听力努力程度降低，这表现为在听到句子后瞳孔大小更快地恢复到基线水平。启动提示减少了两个听众群体中心理修复的持续成本。对于听力损失群体，启动提示还降低了句子中目标单词和非目标单词的错误发生率，这表明启动提示保留了处理整个句子所需的认知资源。
这些结果表明，听力正常和听力损失的听众在语音识别过程中都可以从启动提示（提前提示）中受益，从而更准确地修复语音并更轻松地处理语音。
