title: Cochlear implant speech recognition with speech maskers.
abstract: Speech recognition performance was measured in normal-hearing and cochlear-implant listeners with maskers consisting of either steady-state speech-spectrum-shaped noise or a competing sentence. Target sentences from a male talker were presented in the presence of one of three competing talkers (same male, different male, or female) or speech-spectrum-shaped noise generated from this talker at several target-to-masker ratios. For the normal-hearing listeners, target-masker combinations were processed through a noise-excited vocoder designed to simulate a cochlear implant. With unprocessed stimuli, a normal-hearing control group maintained high levels of intelligibility down to target-to-masker ratios as low as 0 dB and showed a release from masking, producing better performance with single-talker maskers than with steady-state noise. In contrast, no masking release was observed in either implant or normal-hearing subjects listening through an implant simulation. The performance of the simulation and implant groups did not improve when the single-talker masker was a different talker compared to the same talker as the target speech, as was found in the normal-hearing control. These results are interpreted as evidence for a significant role of informational masking and modulation interference in cochlear implant speech recognition with fluctuating maskers. This informational masking may originate from increased target-masker similarity when spectral resolution is reduced.
authors.affiliation: University of California, Department of Otolaryngology--Head and Neck Surgery, Irvine, California 92697-1275, USA. stickney@uci.edu
authors.forename: Ginger S
authors.initials: GS
authors.lastname: Stickney
authors.forename: Fan-Gang
authors.initials: FG
authors.lastname: Zeng
authors.forename: Ruth
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Litovsky
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Assmann
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D003054:Cochlear Implants; D004867:Equipment Design; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009622:Noise / Q000009:adverse effects*; D010470:Perceptual Masking / Q000502:physiology*; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*