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'Normal' hearing thresholds and fundamental auditory grouping processes predict difficulties with speech-in-noise perception.


ABSTRACT: Understanding speech when background noise is present is a critical everyday task that varies widely among people. A key challenge is to understand why some people struggle with speech-in-noise perception, despite having clinically normal hearing. Here, we developed new figure-ground tests that require participants to extract a coherent tone pattern from a stochastic background of tones. These tests dissociated variability in speech-in-noise perception related to mechanisms for detecting static (same-frequency) patterns and those for tracking patterns that change frequency over time. In addition, elevated hearing thresholds that are widely considered to be 'normal' explained significant variance in speech-in-noise perception, independent of figure-ground perception. Overall, our results demonstrate that successful speech-in-noise perception is related to audiometric thresholds, fundamental grouping of static acoustic patterns, and tracking of acoustic sources that change in frequency. Crucially, speech-in-noise deficits are better assessed by measuring central (grouping) processes alongside audiometric thresholds.

SUBMITTER: Holmes E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6856372 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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'Normal' hearing thresholds and fundamental auditory grouping processes predict difficulties with speech-in-noise perception.

Holmes Emma E   Griffiths Timothy D TD  

Scientific reports 20191114 1


Understanding speech when background noise is present is a critical everyday task that varies widely among people. A key challenge is to understand why some people struggle with speech-in-noise perception, despite having clinically normal hearing. Here, we developed new figure-ground tests that require participants to extract a coherent tone pattern from a stochastic background of tones. These tests dissociated variability in speech-in-noise perception related to mechanisms for detecting static  ...[more]

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