Perception of Speech in Context by Listeners With Healthy and Impaired Hearing
试验速览
- 阶段
- 不适用
- 状态
- 招募中
- 入组人数
- 680
- 试验地点
- 4
- 主要终点
- Speech categorization
研究概览
简要总结
Recognition of speech sounds is accomplished through the use of adjacent sounds in time, in what is termed acoustic context. The frequency and temporal properties of these contextual sounds play a large role in recognition of human speech. Historically, most research on both speech perception and sound perception in general examine sounds out-of-context, or presented individually. Further, these studies have been conducted independently of each other with little connection across labs, across sounds, etc. These approaches slow the progress in understanding how listeners with hearing difficulties use context to recognize speech and how their hearing aids and/or cochlear implants might be modified to improve their perception. This research has three main goals. First, the investigators predict that performance in speech sound recognition experiments will be related when testing the same speech frequencies or the same moments in time, but that performance will not be related in further comparisons across speech frequencies or at different moments in time. Second, the investigators predict that adding background noise will make this contextual speech perception more difficult, and that these difficulties will be more severe for listeners with hearing loss. Third, the investigators predict that cochlear implant users will also use surrounding sounds in their speech recognition, but with key differences than healthy-hearing listeners owing to the sound processing done by their implants. In tandem with these goals, the investigators will use computer models to simulate how neurons respond to speech sounds individually and when surrounded by other sounds.
详细描述
Participants in this study listen to speech played at a comfortable volume and respond by indicating what they heard, either in open-ended form or by choosing among a set of options displayed on a computer. They are seated inside a sound booth and complete the task at their own pace, with little intervention needed from the experimenter. Upon arrival at the lab, participants are given a brief description of the topic of the research (how earlier sounds influence our perception of later speech sounds) and are presented with a detailed informed consent form. Their demographic information is collected and then the experiment is demonstrated. Breaks are offered between testing blocks, which last about 10-15 minutes each.
The main differences in the protocol consist of the various stimulus manipulations, which are designed to specifically control aspect of the voice that the participant hears. For example, the sound can be manipulated to emphasize higher or lower frequencies, or be spoken relatively slowly or quickly, or manipulated to sound degraded, as if the participant has a hearing loss. In all occasions, the manipulations are signaled to the participant. The outcome measure typically consists of the pattern of word identification, and specifically how that pattern changes depending on acoustic properties of the sounds heard before the target word.
Additional comparison measurements are taken of the participant's ability to hear and repeat words or sentences in background noise.
Once an experiment is ready to launch, participants are randomly assigned to different testing conditions ("interventions"). But in most of the planned experiments, participants complete identical protocols, except that the specific ordering of many speech stimuli is randomized within the testing session. After the participant completes all of the testing blocks, they are debriefed about the full nature of the study, the hypotheses and the larger scope of the project in the context of speech communication.
研究设计
- 研究类型
- Interventional
- 分配方式
- Na
- 干预模型
- Single Group
- 主要目的
- Basic Science
- 盲法
- None
入排标准
- 年龄范围
- 18 Years 至 65 Years（Adult, Older Adult）
- 性别
- All
- 接受健康志愿者
- 是
入选标准
- •Be able to recognize spoken words in English
- •Be a competent speaker of north American English
- •Be an adult between the age of 18 to 65 years
- •Have normal audiometric thresholds below 25 decibels hearing loss (dB HL) at frequencies between 250 and 8000 Hz OR have audiometric thresholds not exceeding 40 dB HL at frequencies between 250 and 8000 Hz OR have audiometric thresholds not exceeding 55 dB HL at frequencies between 250 and 8000 Hz OR use a cochlear implant
- •Lack language-learning or other cognitive disabilities
排除标准
- •Inability to recognize spoken words in English
- •Not a competent speaker of north American English
- •Be younger than 18 years of age
- •Be older than 65 years of age
- •Have normal audiometric thresholds exceeding 25 dB HL at frequencies between 250 and 8000 Hz OR have audiometric thresholds exceeding 40 dB HL at frequencies between 250 and 8000 Hz OR have audiometric thresholds exceeding 55 dB HL at frequencies between 250 and 8000 Hz
- •Language-learning or other cognitive disabilities
研究组 & 干预措施
Speech perception experiments
This arm involves experiments wherein participants listen to speech played at comfortable volumes and respond by indicating what they heard either in open-ended form or by choosing among a set of options displayed on a computer.
干预措施: Speech Manipulation (Behavioral)
结局指标
主要结局
Speech categorization
时间窗: "Post-treatment" where "treatment" is the systematic manipulation of speech sounds. Speech categorization will be evaluated during the main part of the testing. Outcomes will be assessed and data reported through study completion, an average of 1 year
The participant sits inside a double-walled sound booth. They are seated at a table that contains a computer monitor and a mouse. A single utterance is played over headphones or through a loudspeaker directly in front, and the participant indicates what they thought the utterance was by selecting among various options on the screen using the mouse. During a single block of trials there are between 60 and 160 sounds, depending on the exact experiment. Ordering of stimuli within the block is randomized. That testing block may be repeated multiple times so that the proportion of responses for each sound-response pair can be estimated reliably and precisely. Completion and advancement of trials is at the participant's own pace. Each testing block takes between 4 and 15 minutes.
次要结局
- Audiometric threshold testing(Baseline)
- Speech recognition("Post-treatment" where "treatment" is the systematic manipulation of speech sounds. Word recognition will be evaluated during the main part of the testing. Outcomes will be assessed and data reported through study completion, an average of 1 year)
研究者
Christian Stilp
Associate Professor
Marquette University