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S Gordon-Salant

Publications and source records attributed to S Gordon-Salant.

32 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
PubMed1993

Temporal factors and speech recognition performance in young and elderly listeners.

This study investigated factors that contribute to deficits of elderly listeners in recognizing speech that is degraded by temporal waveform distortion. Young and elderly listeners with normal hearing sensitivity and with mild-to-moderate, sloping sensorineural hearing losses were evaluated. Low-predictability (LP) sentences from the Revised Speech Perception in Noise test (R-SPIN) (Bilger, Nuetzel, Rabinowitz, & Rzeczkowski, 1984) were presented to subjects in undistorted form and in three forms of distortion: time compression, reverberation, and interruption. Percent-correct recognition scores indicated that age and hearing impairment contributed independently to deficits in recognizing all forms of temporally distorted speech. In addition, subjects' auditory temporal processing abilities were assessed on duration discrimination and gap detection tasks. Canonical correlation procedures showed that some of the suprathreshold temporal processing measures, especially gap duration discrimination, contributed to the ability to recognize reverberant speech. The overall conclusion is that age-related factors other than peripheral hearing loss contribute to diminished speech recognition performance of elderly listeners.

Adult↗
PubMed1992

Performance with an adaptive frequency response hearing aid in a sample of elderly hearing-impaired listeners.

This study assessed the efficacy of an adaptive frequency response hearing aid (AFR) for improving speech perception ability in noise among a group of elderly hearing-impaired listeners. A speech recognition task, self-assessed speech intelligibility task, and qualitative judgment task were administered to examine subtle differences in the effects of the AFR "signal processing" versus linear amplification. Group scores showed statistically significant improvement with AFR processing on the speech recognition task involving high-predictability sentences, but not on any other measures. However, there was a trend toward improved scores with AFR processing for low-predictability sentences as well. These results suggest that AFR circuitry may be most useful for enhancing recognition of speech in high-cue contexts. Wide individual subject variability was observed on all measures. This demonstrates the importance of evaluating the effectiveness of noise reduction hearing aids on an individual basis and with more than one task.

Acoustic Impedance Tests↗
PubMed1988

Hemispheric processing of affective and linguistic intonation contours in normal subjects.

In a previous study of the comprehension of linguistic prosody in brain-damaged subjects, S. R. Grant and W. O. Dingwall (1984. The role of the right hemisphere in processing linguistic prosody, presentation at the Academy of Aphasia, 1984) demonstrated that the right hemisphere (RH) of nonaphasic patients plays a prominent role in the processing of stress and intonation. The present study examines laterality for affective and linguistic prosody using the dichotic listening paradigm. Both types of prosody elicited a significant left ear advantage. This advantage was more pronounced for affective than for linguistic prosody. These findings strongly support previously documented evidence of RH involvement in the processing of affective prosody (R. G. Ley & M. P. Bryden, 1982. A dissociation of right and left hemispheric effects for recognizing emotional tone and verbal content, Brain and Cognition, 1, 3-9). They also provide support for the previously mentioned demonstration of RH involvement in the processing of linguistic intonation (S. Blumstein & W. E. Cooper, 1974. Hemispheric processing of intonation contours, Cortex, 10, 146-158; Grant & Dingwall, 1984).

Adult↗
PubMed1987

Consonant recognition and confusion patterns among elderly hearing-impaired subjects.

This study investigated whether unique consonant recognition and confusion patterns are associated with hearing loss among elderly listeners. Subjects were all greater than 65 years, and had normal hearing, or gradually or sharply sloping sensorineural hearing losses. Recognition of 19 consonants, paired with each of three vowels in a CV format, was assessed at two speech levels in a background of babble (+6 dB signal-to-babble ratio). Analyses of percent correct scores for overall nonsense syllable performance and for consonants according to place, manner, and voicing categories generally revealed better performance by the normal-hearing subjects than by the hearing-impaired subjects. However, individual differences scaling analysis of consonant confusions failed to retrieve speech perception patterns that were unique to listener group. These results tentatively suggest that the presence and configuration of hearing loss among elderly listeners may affect the level of performance but not the specific pattern of performance.

Aged↗
PubMed1987

Age-related differences in speech recognition performance as a function of test format and paradigm.

This study assessed speech recognition performance by young and elderly listeners with normal hearing and mild sensorineural hearing loss on a variety of speech recognition tasks. The tasks varied in terms of presence of noise, stimulus presentation level, test format, and test paradigm. The purpose was to identify a set of test conditions which is sensitive for revealing the effects of age, independent of hearing loss. The results showed that young and elderly listeners usually did not exhibit significant performance differences in quiet or fixed-noise conditions. However, an age effect was observed consistently for all conditions involving an adaptive noise paradigm. These findings imply that the important variables to consider for revealing effects of age are the use of noise coupled with an adaptive paradigm.

Adult↗
PubMed1987

Minimum stimulus levels for temporal gap resolution in listeners with sensorineural hearing loss.

The minimum sensation levels required for optimal temporal gap resolution were measured in five listeners with moderately severe degrees of sensorineural hearing loss. The stimuli were three continuous octave-band noises centered at 0.5, 2.0, and 4.0 kHz. Subjects used a Békésy tracking procedure to determine the minimum signal levels needed to resolve periodic temporal gaps of fixed durations. Analysis of data across subjects and signal revealed only a weak correlation between this minimum SL and the corresponding HLs; most listeners resolved threshold gaps at minimum levels of 25-35 dB SL, independent of degree of hearing loss. The results differ from those of normal subjects with masking-induced hearing loss [Fitzgibbons, Percept. Psychophys. 35, 446-450 (1984)], which showed an inverse relationship between HL and the SLs required for gap threshold. The findings indicate that assessment of optimal gap resolution in listeners with cochlear impairment requires stimulus presentation levels of at least 25-35 dB SL. Even with sufficient stimulus intensity, each of the hearing-impaired listeners exhibited abnormal gap resolution for each octave-band signal.

Acoustic Stimulation↗
PubMed1987

Effects of acoustic modification on consonant recognition by elderly hearing-impaired subjects.

In a recent study [S. Gordon-Salant, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 80, 1599-1607 (1986)], young and elderly normal-hearing listeners demonstrated significant improvements in consonant-vowel (CV) recognition with acoustic modification of the speech signal incorporating increments in the consonant-vowel ratio (CVR). Acoustic modification of consonant duration failed to enhance performance. The present study investigated whether consonant recognition deficits of elderly hearing-impaired listeners would be reduced by these acoustic modifications, as well as by increases in speech level. Performance of elderly hearing-impaired listeners with gradually sloping and sharply sloping sensorineural hearing losses was compared to performance of elderly normal-threshold listeners (reported previously) for recognition of a variety of nonsense syllable stimuli. These stimuli included unmodified CVs, CVs with increases in CVR, CVs with increases in consonant duration, and CVs with increases in both CVR and consonant duration. Stimuli were presented at each of two speech levels with a background of noise. Results obtained from the hearing-impaired listeners agreed with those observed previously from normal-hearing listeners. Differences in performance between the three subject groups as a function of level were observed also.

Aged↗
PubMed1987

Temporal gap resolution in listeners with high-frequency sensorineural hearing loss.

Temporal gap resolution was measured in five normal-hearing listeners and five cochlear-impaired listeners, whose sensitivity losses were restricted to the frequency regions above 1000 Hz. The stimuli included a broadband noise and three octave band noises centered at 0.5, 1.0, and 4.0 kHz. Results for the normal-hearing subjects agree with previous findings and reveal that gap resolution improves progressively with an increase in signal frequency. Gap resolution in the impaired listeners was significantly poorer than normal for all signals including those that stimulated frequency regions with normal pure-tone sensitivity. Smallest gap thresholds for the impaired listeners were observed with the broadband signal at high levels. This result agrees with data from other experiments and confirms the importance of high-frequency signal audibility in gap detection. The octave band data reveal that resolution deficits can be quite large within restricted frequency regions, even those with minimal sensitivity loss.

Audiometry, Pure-Tone↗
PubMed1986

Effects of aging on response criteria in speech-recognition tasks.

This study examined whether young and elderly listeners exhibit different response criteria on speech-recognition tasks. Young and elderly listeners with normal hearing and with matched mild hearing losses were evaluated on Northwestern University Test No. 6 (Tillman & Carhart, 1966) and the California Consonant Test (Owens & Schubert, 1977) presented at 80 dB SPL and 95 dB SPL. The level of the multitalker babble background was adjusted individually to the signal-to-babble ratio at which the listener achieved 50% criterion performance. Significant differences between the performances of young and elderly listeners were observed on the response bias measure (B) but not on the percent-correct or sensitivity [P(A)] measures. Elderly listeners exhibited less cautious response criteria than did younger listeners. The implications of these results to communication strategies of elderly listeners are discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed1986

Recognition of natural and time/intensity altered CVs by young and elderly subjects with normal hearing.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficiency of three acoustic modifications derived from clear speech for improving consonant recognition by young and elderly normal-hearing subjects. Percent-correct nonsense syllable recognition was measured for four stimulus sets: unmodified stimuli; stimuli with consonant duration increased by 100%; stimuli with consonant-vowel ratio increased by 10 dB; and stimuli with both consonant duration and consonant-vowel ratio increased. Analyses of overall nonsense syllable recognition, consonant feature recognition, and consonant confusion patterns demonstrated that the consonant-vowel ratio increase modification produced better performance than the other acoustic modifications by both subject groups. However, elderly subjects exhibited poorer performance than young subjects in most conditions. These results and their implications are discussed.

Adult↗
PubMed1985

Phoneme feature perception in noise by normal-hearing and hearing-impaired subjects.

The purpose of this investigation was to determine whether normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners perceive phoneme features differently in noise and to determine whether phoneme perception changes as a function of signal-to-noise ratio (S/N). Consonant-vowel recognition by normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners was assessed in quiet and in three noise conditions. Analysis of total percent correct recognition scores revealed significant effects of hearing status, S/N, and vowel context. Patterns of phoneme errors were analyzed by INDSCAL. Derived consonant features that accounted for phoneme errors by both subject groups were similar to ones reported by other investigators. However, weightings associated with the individual features varied with changes in noise condition. Although hearing-impaired listeners exhibited poorer overall nonsense syllable recognition scores in noise than normal-hearing listeners, no specific set of features emerged from the multidimensional scaling procedures that could uniquely account for this performance deficit.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1985

Recognition of digitized CV syllables in multitalker babble.

Nonsense syllable recognition by 10 normal-hearing listeners was assessed in quiet and three levels of multitalker babble. Stimuli were 19 consonants paired with /a/, /i/, and /u/ in a CV format. Performance measures included total syllable recognition, consonant feature-class recognition, and consonant feature errors. Results of each analysis were strongly affected by vowel coarticulation and noise level. However, a distinctive pattern of performance in the babble was observed. Comparisons are made between this pattern and those obtained previously in other types of noise backgrounds. Implications for clinical evaluation and auditory training are discussed.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1984

Effects of reducing low-frequency amplification on consonant perception in quiet and noise.

The aim of this study was to assess the effect of low-frequency amplification on speech recognition performance by hearing-impaired listeners. Consonant identification performance by subjects with flat hearing losses and high-frequency hearing losses was assessed in three different hearing aid conditions, in quiet and noise. The experimental hearing aids all provided extra high-frequency amplification but differed in the amount of low-frequency amplification. The results showed that listeners with flat hearing losses benefited by low-frequency amplification, whereas subjects with high-frequency hearing losses exhibited deteriorating scores in conditions with greatest low-frequency amplification. Analyses of phonetic feature perception and individual consonant recognition scores revealed subtle interactions between hearing loss configuration and amplification contour.

Amplifiers, Electronic↗