title: Exploration of factors beyond audibility that may influence speech recognition.
abstract: The effects of reduced ability to differentiate acoustic information on speech reception are difficult to separate from the effects of reduced absolute sensitivity. One possible way is to explore abilities to differentiate acoustic information while holding absolute sensitivity constant. Two auditory phenomena known as enhancement and suppression, which are thought to be related to speech reception ability, were evaluated in persons with normal absolute sensitivity who had either normal or reduced speech recognition in noise. Results of forward masking experiments do not support the notion that enhancement or suppression is reduced in persons with reduced speech recognition in noise. However, their pattern of performance differed from that of listeners with normal speech recognition in noise when the duration of certain complex maskers was varied.
authors.affiliation: Department of Speech Communication, University of Texas, Austin.
authors.forename: L M
authors.initials: LM
authors.lastname: Thibodeau
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001309:Auditory Threshold; D006309:Hearing / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D009622:Noise; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D011571:Psychoacoustics; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D013069:Speech Reception Threshold Test