title: Predicting the effect of hearing loss and audibility on amplified speech reception in a multi-talker listening scenario.
abstract: Auditive and cognitive influences on speech perception in a complex situation were investigated in listeners with normal hearing (NH) and hearing loss (HL). The speech corpus used was the Nonsense-Syllable Response Measure [NSRM; Woods and Kalluri, (2010). International Hearing Aid Research Conference, pp. 40-41], a 12-talker corpus which combines 154 nonsense syllables with 8 different carrier phrases. Listeners heard NSRM sentences in quiet, background noise, and in background noise plus other "jammer" NSRM sentences. All stimuli were linearly amplified. A "proficiency" value, determined from the results in quiet and the quiet-condition speech intelligibility index (SII), was used with the SII in predicting results in the other conditions. Results for nine of ten NH subjects were well-predicted (within the limits of binomial variability) in the noise condition, as were eight of these subjects in the noise-plus-jammers condition. All 16 HL results were well-predicted in the noise condition, as were 9 of the HL in the noise-plus-jammers condition. Hierarchical regression partialling out the effects of age found proficiency in noise-plus-jammers significantly correlated with results of "trail-making" tests, thought to index processing speed and attention-deployment ability, and proficiency in quiet and noise was found significantly correlated with results from a backward digit-span memory test.
authors.affiliation: Starkey Hearing Research Center, 2150 Shattuck Avenue, Suite 408, Berkeley, California 94704, USA. william_woods@starkey.com
authors.forename: William S
authors.initials: WS
authors.lastname: Woods
authors.forename: Sridhar
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kalluri
authors.forename: Shareka
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Pentony
authors.forename: Nazanin
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Nooraei
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001288:Attention; D001309:Auditory Threshold; D005260:Female; D006310:Hearing Aids; D006319:Hearing Loss, Sensorineural / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000523:psychology; D006801:Humans; D008144:Loudness Perception; D008297:Male; D008570:Memory, Short-Term; D008875:Middle Aged; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D011930:Reaction Time; D013018:Sound Spectrography; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013067:Speech Perception; D013069:Speech Reception Threshold Test; D014145:Trail Making Test