Petersen Eline Borch
ORCA labs, Lynge, Denmark.
PLoS One. 2025 Jun 2;20(6):e0325244. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0325244. eCollection 2025.
In conversations, interlocutors with hearing impairment (HI), initiate their turns with longer average delay and more variability than their normal-hearing (NH) conversation partners. This paper investigates whether third-party listeners were able to perceive this difference in turn-taking timing (denoted Floor-Transfer Offsets, FTOs) between NH and HI interlocutors. To this avail, the FTOs of segments of conversations were manipulated using four different schemes, such that the two interlocutors timed their turns as if 1) both were NH interlocutors conversing in quiet (NHQ) or 2) both were HI interlocutors conversing in noise (HIN). Two additional conditions were implemented to test if non-varying and faster FTOs affect the perception, manipulating conversations to have constant FTOs corresponding to 3) the median FTO of the NHQ condition (conNHQ) and 4) an even faster FTO of 50 ms (conLow). Forty-four participants rated conversations from the HIN condition as less natural, with poorer flow, and being more difficult to follow compared to conversations from the NHQ condition. Removing the FTO variability resulted in better ratings of flow (conNHQ vs NHQ), while further decreasing the average FTOs (conLow vs conNHQ) had no effect on the ratings. A detailed analysis revealed poorer ratings of flow for individual conversations with higher FTO median, but similar variability, while FTO variability alone did not affect ratings of flow. Together, the results indicate that listeners, and perhaps also conversation participants, are sensitive to small variations in turn-taking timing and that hearing loss may therefore affect the quality of conversations.
在对话中，听力受损（HI）的对话者比听力正常（NH）的对话伙伴发起轮次的平均延迟更长，且变化更大。本文研究第三方听众是否能够察觉到NH和HI对话者在话轮转换时机上的这种差异（称为“下限转移偏移”，FTOs）。为此，使用四种不同方案操纵对话片段的FTOs，使两位对话者的话轮时间安排就好像1）两人都是在安静环境中交谈的NH对话者（NHQ），或者2）两人都是在有噪音环境中交谈的HI对话者（HIN）。还实施了另外两个条件来测试不变的和更快的FTOs是否会影响感知，操纵对话使其具有对应于3）NHQ条件下的中位数FTO（conNHQ）和4）更快的50毫秒FTO（conLow）的恒定FTOs。与NHQ条件下的对话相比，44名参与者将HIN条件下的对话评为不那么自然、流畅性较差且更难理解。消除FTO的变异性会使流畅性评分更高（conNHQ与NHQ相比），而进一步降低平均FTOs（conLow与conNHQ相比）对评分没有影响。详细分析表明，对于FTO中位数较高但变异性相似的单个对话，流畅性评分较差，而仅FTO变异性不会影响流畅性评分。总之，结果表明听众，也许还有对话参与者，对话轮转换时机的微小变化很敏感，因此听力损失可能会影响对话质量。
