Speech-in-noise

PURPOSE: The current study aimed to evaluate hearing-related changes in terms of speech-in-noise processing, fast-rate speech processing, and working memory; and to identify which of these three factors is significantly affected by age-related hearing loss. METHODS: One hundred subjects aged 65-84 years participated in the study. They were classified into four groups ranging from normal hearing to moderate-to-severe hearing loss. All the participants were tested for speech perception in quiet and noisy conditions and for speech perception with time alteration in quiet conditions...

Impaired hearing contralateral to unilateral auditory-cortex lesions is typically only observed under conditions of perceptual competition, such as dichotic presentation or speech in noise. It remains unclear, however, if the source of this effect is direct competition in frequency-specific neurons, or if enhanced processing load in more distant frequencies can also impair auditory detection. To evaluate this question, we studied a group of patients with unilateral auditory-cortex lesions (N = 14, six left-hemispheric (LH), eight right-hemispheric (RH); four females; age range 26-72 years) and a control group (N = 25; 15 females; age range 18-76 years) with a target-detection task in presence of a multi-tone masker, which can produce informational masking...

OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this laboratory-based study was to compare the efficacy of two hearing aid fittings with and without nonlinear frequency compression, implemented within commercially available hearing aids. Previous research regarding the utility of nonlinear frequency compression has revealed conflicting results for speech recognition, marked by high individual variability. Individual differences in auditory function and cognitive abilities, specifically hearing loss slope and working memory, may contribute to aided performance...

OBJECTIVE: Evaluate the effects of therapy with citalopram on the central auditory processing in the elderly measured by central auditory tests. STUDY DESIGN: Prospective, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study. SETTING: Tertiary referral center. PATIENTS: Thirty-nine patients older than 60 years with normal hearing thresholds or symmetrical sensorineural hearing loss up to 70 dBHL, word-recognition score equal to or better than 70%, and diagnosed with central auditory processing disorders completed the study...

Recent animal research has shown that exposure to single episodes of intense noise causes cochlear synaptopathy without affecting hearing thresholds. It has been suggested that the same may occur in humans. If so, it is hypothesized that this would result in impaired encoding of sound and lead to difficulties hearing at suprathreshold levels, particularly in challenging listening environments. The primary aim of this study was to investigate the effect of noise exposure on auditory processing, including the perception of speech in noise, in adult humans...

Wide dynamic range compression (WDRC) processing in hearing aids alters the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of a speech-in-noise signal. This effect depends on the modulations of the speech and noise, input SNR, and WDRC speed. The purpose of the present experiment was to examine the change in output SNR caused by the interaction between modulation characteristics and WDRC speed. Two modulation manipulations were examined: (1) reverberation and (2) variation in background talker number. Results indicated that fast-acting WDRC altered SNR more than slow-acting WDRC; however, reverberation reduced this difference...

The objective of the present study is to evaluate the effect of hybrid cochlear implantation (hCI) on quality of life (QoL), quality of hearing (QoH), and working performance in adult patients, and to compare the long-term results of patients with hCI to those of patients with conventional unilateral cochlear implantation (CI), bilateral CI, and single-sided deafness (SSD) with CI. Sound localization accuracy and speech-in-noise test were also compared between these groups. Eight patients with high-frequency sensorineural hearing loss of unknown etiology were selected in the study...

Binaural hearing helps normal-hearing listeners localize sound sources and understand speech in noise. However, it is not fully understood how far this is the case for bilateral cochlear implant (CI) users. To determine the potential benefits of bilateral over unilateral CIs, speech comprehension thresholds (SCTs) were measured in seven Japanese bilateral CI recipients using Helen test sentences (translated into Japanese) in a two-talker speech interferer presented from the front (co-located with the target speech), ipsilateral to the first-implanted ear (at +90° or -90°), and spatially symmetric at ±90°...

Listening to speech in noise is effortful, particularly for people with hearing impairment. While it is known that effort is related to a complex interplay between bottom-up and top-down processes, the cognitive and neurophysiological mechanisms contributing to effortful listening remain unknown. Therefore, a reliable physiological measure to assess effort remains elusive. This study aimed to determine whether pupil dilation and alpha power change, two physiological measures suggested to index listening effort, assess similar processes...

This present study investigated the link between speech-in-speech perception capacities and four executive function components: response suppression, inhibitory control, switching and working memory. We constructed a cross-modal semantic priming paradigm using a written target word and a spoken prime word, implemented in one of two concurrent auditory sentences (cocktail party situation). The prime and target were semantically related or unrelated. Participants had to perform a lexical decision task on visual target words and simultaneously listen to only one of two pronounced sentences...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Despite amplified speech, listeners with hearing loss often report more difficulties understanding speech in background noise compared to normalhearing listeners. Various factors such as deteriorated hearing sensitivity, age, suprathreshold temporal resolution, and reduced capacity of working memory and attention can attribute to their sentence-in-noise problems. The present study aims to determine a primary explanatory factor for sentence-in-noise recognition difficulties in adults with or without hearing loss...

OBJECTIVES: The newest Nucleus CI processor, the CP900, has two new options to improve speech-in-noise perception: (1) use of an adaptive directional microphone (SCAN mode) and (2) wireless connection to MiniMic1 and MiniMic2 wireless remote microphones. DESIGN: An analysis was made of the absolute and relative benefits of these technologies in a real-world mimicking test situation. Speech perception was tested using an adaptive speech-in-noise test (sentences-in-babble noise)...

OBJECTIVES: Understanding speech in noise is the biggest challenge faced by individuals with cochlear implants (CIs). Improving speech-in-noise perception for pediatric CI recipients continues to remain a high priority for all stakeholders. This study was designed to investigate the efficacy of working memory training for improving speech-in-noise recognition for children with CIs. DESIGN: Fourteen children with CIs (aged 6 to 15 years) received adaptive, home-based training on forward digit span task for 5 weeks, while 13 children with CIs participated in backward digit span training...

This study aimed to analyze the perception of speech in noise in children with poor school performance and to compare them with children with good school performance, considering gender, age and ear side as variables. The intelligibility of speech was evaluated in school children utilizing the Brazilian Hearing in Noise Test (HINT) in the situations of quiet (Q), Left ear competitive noise (NL), Right Ear Competitive Noise (NR), as well as the global average of other hearing situations, denominated Noise Composite (NC)...

OBJECTIVES: Deaf subjects with hearing aids or cochlear implants generally find it challenging to understand speech in noisy environments where a great deal of listening effort and cognitive load are invested. In prelingually deaf children, such difficulties may have detrimental consequences on the learning process and, later in life, on academic performance. Despite the importance of such a topic, currently, there is no validated test for the assessment of cognitive load during audiological tasks...

There is substantial individual variability in understanding speech in adverse listening conditions. This study examined whether a relationship exists between processing speech in noise (environmental degradation) and dysarthric speech (source degradation), with regard to intelligibility performance and the use of metrical stress to segment the degraded speech signals. Ninety native speakers of American English transcribed speech in noise and dysarthric speech. For each type of listening adversity, transcriptions were analyzed for proportion of words correct and lexical segmentation errors indicative of stress cue utilization...

Single-microphone noise reduction leads to subjective benefit, but not to objective improvements in speech intelligibility. We investigated whether response times (RTs) provide an objective measure of the benefit of noise reduction and whether the effect of noise reduction is reflected in rated listening effort. Twelve normal-hearing participants listened to digit triplets that were either unprocessed or processed with one of two noise-reduction algorithms: an ideal binary mask (IBM) and a more realistic minimum mean square error estimator (MMSE)...

Noise-vocoded speech is commonly used to simulate the sensation after cochlear implantation as it consists of spectrally degraded speech. High individual variability exists in learning to understand both noise-vocoded speech and speech perceived through a cochlear implant (CI). This variability is partly ascribed to differing cognitive abilities like working memory, verbal skills or attention. Although clinically highly relevant, up to now, no consensus has been achieved about which cognitive factors exactly predict the intelligibility of speech in noise-vocoded situations in healthy subjects or in patients after cochlear implantation...

Correctly understood speech in difficult listening conditions is often difficult to remember. A long-standing hypothesis for this observation is that the engagement of cognitive resources to aid speech understanding can limit resources available for memory encoding. This hypothesis is consistent with evidence that speech presented in difficult conditions typically elicits greater activity throughout cingulo-opercular regions of frontal cortex that are proposed to optimize task performance through adaptive control of behavior and tonic attention...

We investigated speech recognition in noise in subjects with mild to profound levels of unilateral hearing loss. Thirty-five adults were evaluated using an adaptive signal-to-noise ratio (SNR50) sentence recognition threshold test in three spatial configurations. The results revealed a significant correlation between pure-tone average audiometric thresholds in the poorer ear and SNR thresholds in the two conditions where speech and noise were spatially separated: dichotic - with speech presented to the poorer ear and reverse dichotic - with speech presented to the better ear...