The effects of phonemic compression and anti-upward-spread-of-masking (anti-USOM) on the perception of articulatory features in hearing-impaired listeners.
The effect of speech processing on articulatory-feature recognition was studied in a group of hearing-impaired listeners with high-frequency sensorineural losses. Individual difference scaling (INDSCAL) and sequential information analysis (SINFA) were applied to a set of consonant-vowel-consonant responses measured under various conditions of speech processing. The processing consisted of high-frequency phonemic compression combined with compensation for anti-upward-spread-of-masking (i.e. anti-USOM). In quiet, we found an improved recognition of frication with compression, whereas additional anti-USOM improved the recognition of the second and third vowel-formants. In background noise, we found remarkably negative effects of anti-USOM on the recognition of features containing low-frequency cues, such as voicing and nasality. We conclude that the combined results of SINFA and INDSCAL provide important insights into the possibilities and limitations of phonemic compression and anti-USOM.
Goedegebure
André
A
Academic Medical Centre, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. A.Goedegebure@amc.uva.nl
Goedegebure-Hulshof
Marieke
M
Verschuure
Hans
H
Dreschler
Wouter A
WA
D000704:Analysis of Variance; D006316:Hearing Loss, High-Frequency / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006801:Humans; D009622:Noise; D010470:Perceptual Masking / Q000502:physiology*; D010700:Phonetics; D013018:Sound Spectrography / Q000379:methods; D013065:Speech Intelligibility / Q000502:physiology*; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology