Unknown

Dataset Information

0

High-Frequency Sensorineural Hearing Loss Alters Cue-Weighting Strategies for Discriminating Stop Consonants in Noise.


ABSTRACT: There is increasing evidence that hearing-impaired (HI) individuals do not use the same listening strategies as normal-hearing (NH) individuals, even when wearing optimally fitted hearing aids. In this perspective, better characterization of individual perceptual strategies is an important step toward designing more effective speech-processing algorithms. Here, we describe two complementary approaches for (a) revealing the acoustic cues used by a participant in a /d/-/g/ categorization task in noise and (b) measuring the relative contributions of these cues to decision. These two approaches involve natural speech recordings altered by the addition of a “bump noise.” The bumps were narrowband bursts of noise localized on the spectrotemporal locations of the acoustic cues, allowing the experimenter to manipulate the consonant percept. The cue-weighting strategies were estimated for three groups of participants: 17 NH listeners, 18 HI listeners with high-frequency loss, and 15 HI listeners with flat loss. HI participants were provided with individual frequency-dependent amplification to compensate for their hearing loss. Although all listeners relied more heavily on the high-frequency cue than on the low-frequency cue, an important variability was observed in the individual weights, mostly explained by differences in internal noise. Individuals with high-frequency loss relied slightly less heavily on the high-frequency cue relative to the low-frequency cue, compared with NH individuals, suggesting a possible influence of supra-threshold deficits on cue-weighting strategies. Altogether, these results suggest a need for individually tailored speech-in-noise processing in hearing aids, if more effective speech discriminability in noise is to be achieved.

SUBMITTER: Varnet L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6856982 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

Similar Datasets

| S-EPMC8902251 | biostudies-literature
| S-EPMC8602250 | biostudies-literature
| S-EPMC2722305 | biostudies-other
| S-EPMC5613382 | biostudies-literature
| S-EPMC6876232 | biostudies-literature
| S-EPMC2719490 | biostudies-other
| S-EPMC8311061 | biostudies-literature
| S-EPMC9067435 | biostudies-literature
| S-EPMC9190152 | biostudies-literature
| S-EPMC8794920 | biostudies-literature