Browse
Submit Data
Databases
API
Help

Dataset Information

0 Views

0 Connections

0 Citations

0 Reanalyses

0 Downloads

Omics score: 0

The relative importance of consonant and vowel segments to the recognition of words and sentences: effects of age and hearing loss.

ABSTRACT: This study investigated the ability to use cues contained within vowel and consonant segments by older listeners with normal or impaired hearing. Spectral shaping restored audibility for the hearing-impaired group. Word and sentence materials were processed to contain primarily consonants or vowels by replacing segments with low-level speech-shaped noise. The proportion of the total duration of preserved speech was varied by manipulating the amount of transitional information contained within vowel and consonant segments. Older listeners performed more poorly than young listeners on all conditions except when listening to sentences with only the vowels preserved. Results confirmed a greater contribution to intelligibility of vowel segments in sentences, but not in words, for young normal-hearing, older normal-hearing, and older hearing-impaired listeners. Older listeners received a greater benefit than young listeners from vowels presented in a sentence context. Correlation analyses among the older listeners demonstrated an association between consonant and vowel performance in isolated words but not in sentences. In addition, the use of vowel cues in sentences was relatively independent of age and auditory sensitivity when audibility is ensured. Combined, results argue that older listeners are able to use essential cues carried by vowels for sentence intelligibility.

SUBMITTER: Fogerty D

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3460985 | biostudies-other | 2012 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other

ACCESS DATA

Json Xml

Similar Datasets

A corpus of consonant-vowel-consonant real words and nonwords: comparison of phonotactic probability, neighborhood density, and consonant age of acquisition.

Project description:A corpus of 5,765 consonant-vowel-consonant sequences (CVCs) was compiled, and phonotactic probability and neighborhood density were computed for both child and adult corpora. This corpus of CVCs, provided as supplementary materials, was analyzed to address the following questions: (1) Do computations based on a child corpus differ from those based on an adult corpus? (2) Do the phonotactic probability and/or the neighborhood density of real words differ from those of nonwords? (3) Do phonotactic probability and/or neighborhood density differ across CVCs that vary in consonant age of acquisition? The results showed significant differences in phonotactic probability and neighborhood density for the child versus adult corpora, replicating prior findings. The impact of this difference on future studies will depend on the level of precision needed when specifying probability and density. In addition, significant and large differences in phonotactic probability and neighborhood density were detected between real words and nonwords, which may present methodological challenges for future research. Finally, CVCs composed of earlier-acquired sounds differed significantly in probability and density from those composed of later-acquired sounds, although this effect was relatively small and is less likely to present significant methodological challenges to future studies.

| S-EPMC3633677 | biostudies-literature

Effects of age and hearing loss on the recognition of interrupted words in isolation and in sentences.

Project description: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.

| S-EPMC3292613 | biostudies-other

Relative Weights of Temporal Envelope Cues in Different Frequency Regions for Mandarin Vowel, Consonant, and Lexical Tone Recognition.

Project description:Objectives: Mandarin-speaking users of cochlear implants (CI) perform poorer than their English counterpart. This may be because present CI speech coding schemes are largely based on English. This study aims to evaluate the relative contributions of temporal envelope (E) cues to Mandarin phoneme (including vowel, and consonant) and lexical tone recognition to provide information for speech coding schemes specific to Mandarin. Design: Eleven normal hearing subjects were studied using acoustic temporal E cues that were extracted from 30 continuous frequency bands between 80 and 7,562 Hz using the Hilbert transform and divided into five frequency regions. Percent-correct recognition scores were obtained with acoustic E cues presented in three, four, and five frequency regions and their relative weights calculated using the least-square approach. Results: For stimuli with three, four, and five frequency regions, percent-correct scores for vowel recognition using E cues were 50.43-84.82%, 76.27-95.24%, and 96.58%, respectively; for consonant recognition 35.49-63.77%, 67.75-78.87%, and 87.87%; for lexical tone recognition 60.80-97.15%, 73.16-96.87%, and 96.73%. For frequency region 1 to frequency region 5, the mean weights in vowel recognition were 0.17, 0.31, 0.22, 0.18, and 0.12, respectively; in consonant recognition 0.10, 0.16, 0.18, 0.23, and 0.33; in lexical tone recognition 0.38, 0.18, 0.14, 0.16, and 0.14. Conclusion: Regions that contributed most for vowel recognition was Region 2 (502-1,022 Hz) that contains first formant (F1) information; Region 5 (3,856-7,562 Hz) contributed most to consonant recognition; Region 1 (80-502 Hz) that contains fundamental frequency (F0) information contributed most to lexical tone recognition.

| S-EPMC8678109 | biostudies-literature

Band importance for sentences and words reexamined.

Project description:Band-importance functions were created using the "compound" technique [Apoux and Healy, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 132, 1078-1087 (2012)] that accounts for the multitude of synergistic and redundant interactions that take place among speech bands. Functions were created for standard recordings of the speech perception in noise (SPIN) sentences and the Central Institute for the Deaf (CID) W-22 words using 21 critical-band divisions and steep filtering to eliminate the influence of filter slopes. On a given trial, a band of interest was presented along with four other bands having spectral locations determined randomly on each trial. In corresponding trials, the band of interest was absent and only the four other bands were present. The importance of the band of interest was determined by the difference between paired band-present and band-absent trials. Because the locations of the other bands changed randomly from trial to trial, various interactions occurred between the band of interest and other speech bands which provided a general estimate of band importance. Obtained band-importance functions differed substantially from those currently available for identical speech recordings. In addition to differences in the overall shape of the functions, especially for the W-22 words, a complex microstructure was observed in which the importance of adjacent frequency bands often varied considerably. This microstructure may result in better predictive power of the current functions.

| S-EPMC3548885 | biostudies-other

The role of vowel and consonant fundamental frequency, envelope, and temporal fine structure cues to the intelligibility of words and sentences.

Project description:The speech signal contains many acoustic properties that may contribute differently to spoken word recognition. Previous studies have demonstrated that the importance of properties present during consonants or vowels is dependent upon the linguistic context (i.e., words versus sentences). The current study investigated three potentially informative acoustic properties that are present during consonants and vowels for monosyllabic words and sentences. Natural variations in fundamental frequency were either flattened or removed. The speech envelope and temporal fine structure were also investigated by limiting the availability of these cues via noisy signal extraction. Thus, this study investigated the contribution of these acoustic properties, present during either consonants or vowels, to overall word and sentence intelligibility. Results demonstrated that all processing conditions displayed better performance for vowel-only sentences. Greater performance with vowel-only sentences remained, despite removing dynamic cues of the fundamental frequency. Word and sentence comparisons suggest that the speech envelope may be at least partially responsible for additional vowel contributions in sentences. Results suggest that speech information transmitted by the envelope is responsible, in part, for greater vowel contributions in sentences, but is not predictive for isolated words.

| S-EPMC3292616 | biostudies-other

Effects of consonant-vowel intensity ratio on loudness of monosyllabic words.

Project description:Previous research has suggested that speech loudness is determined primarily by the vowel in consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) monosyllabic words, and that consonant intensity has a negligible effect. The current study further examines the unique aspects of speech loudness by manipulating consonant-vowel intensity ratios (CVRs), while holding the vowel constant at a comfortable listening level (70 dB), to determine the extent to which vowels and consonants contribute differentially to the loudness of monosyllabic words with voiced and voiceless consonants. The loudness of words edited to have CVRs ranging from -6 to +6 dB was compared to that of standard words with unaltered CVR by 10 normal-hearing listeners in an adaptive procedure. Loudness and overall level as a function of CVR were compared for four CVC word types: both voiceless consonants modified; only initial voiceless consonants modified; both voiced consonants modified; and only initial voiced consonants modified. Results indicate that the loudness of CVC monosyllabic words is not based strictly on the level of the vowel; rather, the overall level of the word and the level of the vowel contribute approximately equally. In addition to furthering the basic understanding of speech perception, the current results may be of value for the coding of loudness by hearing aids and cochlear implants.

| S-EPMC3003730 | biostudies-other

Modeling consonant-vowel coarticulation for articulatory speech synthesis.

Project description:A central challenge for articulatory speech synthesis is the simulation of realistic articulatory movements, which is critical for the generation of highly natural and intelligible speech. This includes modeling coarticulation, i.e., the context-dependent variation of the articulatory and acoustic realization of phonemes, especially of consonants. Here we propose a method to simulate the context-sensitive articulation of consonants in consonant-vowel syllables. To achieve this, the vocal tract target shape of a consonant in the context of a given vowel is derived as the weighted average of three measured and acoustically-optimized reference vocal tract shapes for that consonant in the context of the corner vowels /a/, /i/, and /u/. The weights are determined by mapping the target shape of the given context vowel into the vowel subspace spanned by the corner vowels. The model was applied for the synthesis of consonant-vowel syllables with the consonants /b/, /d/, /g/, /l/, /r/, /m/, /n/ in all combinations with the eight long German vowels. In a perception test, the mean recognition rate for the consonants in the isolated syllables was 82.4%. This demonstrates the potential of the approach for highly intelligible articulatory speech synthesis.

| S-EPMC3628899 | biostudies-literature

The Impact of Age, Background Noise, Semantic Ambiguity, and Hearing Loss on Recognition Memory for Spoken Sentences.

Project description:Purpose:The goal of this study was to determine how background noise, linguistic properties of spoken sentences, and listener abilities (hearing sensitivity and verbal working memory) affect cognitive demand during auditory sentence comprehension. Method:We tested 30 young adults and 30 older adults. Participants heard lists of sentences in quiet and in 8-talker babble at signal-to-noise ratios of +15 dB and +5 dB, which increased acoustic challenge but left the speech largely intelligible. Half of the sentences contained semantically ambiguous words to additionally manipulate cognitive challenge. Following each list, participants performed a visual recognition memory task in which they viewed written sentences and indicated whether they remembered hearing the sentence previously. Results:Recognition memory (indexed by d') was poorer for acoustically challenging sentences, poorer for sentences containing ambiguous words, and differentially poorer for noisy high-ambiguity sentences. Similar patterns were observed for Z-transformed response time data. There were no main effects of age, but age interacted with both acoustic clarity and semantic ambiguity such that older adults' recognition memory was poorer for acoustically degraded high-ambiguity sentences than the young adults'. Within the older adult group, exploratory correlation analyses suggested that poorer hearing ability was associated with poorer recognition memory for sentences in noise, and better verbal working memory was associated with better recognition memory for sentences in noise. Conclusions:Our results demonstrate listeners' reliance on domain-general cognitive processes when listening to acoustically challenging speech, even when speech is highly intelligible. Acoustic challenge and semantic ambiguity both reduce the accuracy of listeners' recognition memory for spoken sentences. Supplemental Materials:https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.5848059.

| S-EPMC5963044 | biostudies-literature

Vowel production of Mandarin-speaking hearing aid users with different types of hearing loss.

Project description:In contrast with previous research focusing on cochlear implants, this study examined the speech performance of hearing aid users with conductive (n = 11), mixed (n = 10), and sensorineural hearing loss (n = 7) and compared it with the speech of hearing control. Speech intelligibility was evaluated by computing the vowel space area defined by the Mandarin Chinese corner vowels /a, u, i/. The acoustic differences between the vowels were assessed using the Euclidean distance. The results revealed that both the conductive and mixed hearing loss groups exhibited a reduced vowel working space, but no significant difference was found between the sensorineural hearing loss and normal hearing groups. An analysis using the Euclidean distance further showed that the compression of vowel space area in conductive hearing loss can be attributed to the substantial lowering of the second formant of /i/. The differences in vowel production between groups are discussed in terms of the occlusion effect and the signal transmission media of various hearing devices.

| S-EPMC5456089 | biostudies-literature

Syllable-Initial Phonemes Affect Neural Entrainment to Consonant-Vowel Syllables.

Project description:Neural entrainment to speech appears to rely on syllabic features, especially those pertaining to the acoustic envelope of the stimuli. It has been proposed that the neural tracking of speech depends on the phoneme features. In the present electroencephalography experiment, we examined data from 25 participants to investigate neural entrainment to near-isochronous stimuli comprising syllables beginning with different phonemes. We measured the inter-trial phase coherence of neural responses to these stimuli and assessed the relationship between this coherence and acoustic properties of the stimuli designed to quantify their "edginess." We found that entrainment was different across different classes of the syllable-initial phoneme and that entrainment depended on the amount of "edge" in the sound envelope. In particular, the best edge marker and predictor of entrainment was the latency of the maximum derivative of each syllable.

| S-EPMC9237462 | biostudies-literature

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

OmicsDI is an Elixir interoperability service. Learn more ›

Tweets

OmicsDI Databases

PRIDE
PeptideAtlas
MassIVE
JPOST Repository
Physiome Model Repository

EGA
EVA
ENA
LINCS
PAXDB
Cell Collective

MetaboLights
Metabolomics Workbench
MetabolomeExpress
GNPS
BioModels
FAIRDOMHub

ArrayExpress
dbGaP
ExpressionAtlas
GEO
NODE

Information

Databases
Help
API
Contact us
Code on GitHub
Terms of use
Submit Data