title: Effects of age and hearing loss on the recognition of interrupted words in isolation and in sentences.
abstract: The ability to recognize spoken words interrupted by silence was investigated with young normal-hearing listeners and older listeners with and without hearing impairment. Target words from the revised SPIN test by Bilger et al. [J. Speech Hear. Res. 27(1), 32-48 (1984)] were presented in isolation and in the original sentence context using a range of interruption patterns in which portions of speech were replaced with silence. The number of auditory "glimpses" of speech and the glimpse proportion (total duration glimpsed/word duration) were varied using a subset of the SPIN target words that ranged in duration from 300 to 600 ms. The words were presented in isolation, in the context of low-predictability (LP) sentences, and in high-predictability (HP) sentences. The glimpse proportion was found to have a strong influence on word recognition, with relatively little influence of the number of glimpses, glimpse duration, or glimpse rate. Although older listeners tended to recognize fewer interrupted words, there was considerable overlap in recognition scores across listener groups in all conditions, and all groups were affected by interruption parameters and context in much the same way.
authors.affiliation: Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences Indiana University Bloomington, Indiana 47405-7002, USA. kidd@indiana.edu
authors.forename: Gary R
authors.initials: GR
authors.lastname: Kidd
authors.forename: Larry E
authors.initials: LE
authors.lastname: Humes
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology* / Q000523:psychology; D032882:Comprehension; D006309:Hearing / Q000502:physiology; D034381:Hearing Loss / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000523:psychology; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D010470:Perceptual Masking / Q000502:physiology; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult