title: Detection and recognition of stop consonants by normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners.
abstract: This study examined the possibility that hearing-impaired listeners, in addition to displaying poorer-than-normal recognition of speech presented in background noise, require a larger signal-to-noise ratio for the detection of the speech sounds. Psychometric functions for the detection and recognition of stop consonants were obtained from both normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners. Expressing the speech levels in terms of their short-term spectra, the detection of consonants for both subject groups occurred at the same signal-to-noise ratio. In contrast, the hearing-impaired listeners displayed poorer recognition performance than the normal-hearing listeners. These results imply that the higher signal-to-noise ratios required for a given level of recognition by some subjects with hearing loss are not due in part to a deficit in detection of the signals in the masking noise, but rather are due exclusively to a deficit in recognition.
authors.affiliation: Communication Sciences and Disorders, Syracuse University, NY.
authors.forename: C W
authors.initials: CW
authors.lastname: Turner
authors.forename: D A
authors.initials: DA
authors.lastname: Fabry
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Barrett
authors.forename: A R
authors.initials: AR
authors.lastname: Horwitz
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001301:Audiometry, Pure-Tone; D005260:Female; D006309:Hearing / Q000502:physiology; D006319:Hearing Loss, Sensorineural / Q000175:diagnosis*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011594:Psychometrics; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013063:Speech Discrimination Tests; D013067:Speech Perception