Effects of word predictability, child development, and aging on time-gated speech recognition performance.
This study examined the interaction of acoustic-phonetic information with higher-level linguistic contextual information during the real-time speech perception process in child, young adult, and older adult listeners. Five age groups were studied: (a) young children ranging in age from 5 to 7 years, (b) older children aged 8 to 10 years, (c) young adults aged 18 to 23 years, (d) older adults aged 60 to 69 years, and (e) older adults aged 70 to 83 years. All subjects were presented with time-gated monosyllabic target words presented in sentence contexts containing contrasting levels of word predictability. Findings indicated that target word predictability influenced the timing and nature of the real-time recognition process including the listeners' use of initial word sounds. Predictability-high (PH) words were recognized earlier and with greater confidence than predictability-low (PL) words. PH recognition performance was more influenced by child development and aging than PL recognition performance. Older adult listeners required more PH-gated word stimuli to produce accurate responses than younger adults. Older children showed more effective use of PH contexts than younger children.
Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Milwaukee, WI 53201.
C H
CH
Craig
B W
BW
Kim
P M
PM
Rhyner
T K
TK
Chirillo
D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging; D001301:Audiometry, Pure-Tone; D002648:Child; D002663:Child Language; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005260:Female; D006309:Hearing; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D007804:Language Development; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D013060:Speech; D013067:Speech Perception; D013997:Time Factors; D014825:Vocabulary