Article
Construction & Building Technology
Nicola Prodi, Matteo Pellegatti, Chiara Visentin
Summary: The intelligibility of speech in rooms is affected by reverberation and the distribution of sound energy in the impulse response. Monaural analysis assumes that early reflections are beneficial while later reflections are detrimental, but considering binaural cues reveals the importance of comparing signal levels and arrival times at the ears. This study investigates how different types of sound reflections in a room influence binaural cues and their correlation, impacting speech intelligibility. The results show that stronger correlations at the ears improve speech intelligibility, and a specular setting for sound reflections enhances reception thresholds and the utilization of spatial cues.
BUILDING AND ENVIRONMENT
(2023)
Article
Acoustics
Hayato Sato, Kiyohiro Kurisu, Masayuki Morimoto, Mitsuki Maeda
Summary: In Japan, the government has established a disaster information network, including an outdoor acoustic mass notification system, to minimize the risk of serious damage from natural disasters. Research has shown that increasing rainfall rates can lead to higher sound pressure levels of outdoor noise, particularly in the mid-frequencies of around 500 Hz to 1 kHz. A proposed model for estimating outdoor noise levels during rainy conditions suggests that the distance needed for a certain speech-to-noise ratio from the speaker system can be significantly reduced due to heavy rainfall.
Article
Acoustics
Nao Hodoshima
Summary: Public address announcements are widely used but can be unintelligible due to noise and reverberation, especially impacting older adults more than younger adults. In emergencies, mismatch between text information and PA announcements may also decrease intelligibility. Urgent speech is more intelligible than normal speech, and congruent text aids understanding. Older adults benefit more from congruent text in urgent speech, suggesting reliance on prior knowledge in challenging listening environments. These findings highlight the importance of audiovisual congruence in emergency PA announcements for older adults.
SPEECH COMMUNICATION
(2021)
Article
Neurosciences
T. M. Vanessa Chan, Claude Alain
Summary: Research has shown that semantic cues can improve word identification in noise, with effects on late positive components and N400 modulation, being more significant when the cue follows the word in noise.
Article
Audiology & Speech-Language Pathology
Timothy Beechey
Summary: This article provides a tutorial introduction to ordinal pattern analysis, a statistical method designed to quantify the match between hypotheses of relative change and observed data at the individual level. It can be a useful addition to familiar parametric statistical methods, particularly when analyzing inherently individual characteristics and modeling experimental effects in relative terms.
JOURNAL OF SPEECH LANGUAGE AND HEARING RESEARCH
(2023)
Review
Audiology & Speech-Language Pathology
Lyan Porto, Jan Wouters, Astrid van Wieringen
Summary: This article reviews the evidence on the role of working memory and attention in children's speech perception in noise, and discusses how characteristics of measures and non-typical populations affect the relationship. Most studies suggest that attention and especially working memory are involved in children's speech perception in noise. However, methodological variability hinders a clearer understanding of this relationship.
Article
Otorhinolaryngology
Enrico Muzzi, Carol Chermaz, Veronica Castro, Mattia Zaninoni, Amanda Saksida, Eva Orzan
Summary: Wearing face personal protective equipment, especially in noisy environments and with advanced types, significantly impairs speech intelligibility.
EUROPEAN ARCHIVES OF OTO-RHINO-LARYNGOLOGY
(2021)
Article
Acoustics
Thanh Lan Truong, Andrea Weber
Summary: The study found that face masks significantly impacted listeners' intelligibility and recall of sentences produced by both adult and child talkers, contributing to the growing research on the effects of face masks on communication.
JOURNAL OF THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA
(2021)
Article
Chemistry, Multidisciplinary
Giulia Rocco, Giuliano Bernardi, Randall Ali, Toon van Waterschoot, Edoardo Maria Polo, Riccardo Barbieri, Alessia Paglialonga
Summary: The purpose of this study is to assess the intelligibility of VCV stimuli in five languages and select a subset for testing individuals of unknown language. The intelligibility was estimated using psychometric functions derived from the STOI measure and listening tests. Stimuli were selected based on higher intelligibility, lower variability, and shallower psychometric function. The results showed that the set of VCVs in English fulfilled the criteria for multilingual settings.
APPLIED SCIENCES-BASEL
(2023)
Article
Audiology & Speech-Language Pathology
Brennan R. Payne, Jack W. Silcox, Hannah A. Crandell, Amanda Lash, Sarah Hargus Ferguson, Monika Lohani
Summary: The presentation of realistic assistive text captioned speech can offset the negative effects of background noise and hearing impairment on speech memory, as shown in experiments with young normal-hearing adults and older adults with varying levels of hearing acuity.
Article
Acoustics
Naveen K. Nagaraj, Jing Yang, Tanner L. Robinson, Beula M. Magimairaj
Summary: This study found that listeners tend to rely on long-term lexical-semantic memory to restore missing speech information when receiving distorted speech without visual cues, while there was no significant correlation between listeners' semantic fluency and perception in audio-video mode.
JASA EXPRESS LETTERS
(2021)
Article
Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence
Rung-Yu Tseng, Tao-Wei Wang, Szu-Wei Fu, Chia-Ying Lee, Yu Tsao
Summary: Speech perception is crucial for verbal communication, especially for individuals with hearing loss. This study investigated two potential methods, speech enhancement and audiovisual integration, to improve vocoded speech intelligibility in cochlear implant simulation. The experimental results confirmed the effectiveness of these methods and recommended their integration into CI processors for enhanced speech intelligibility in noisy conditions.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COGNITIVE AND DEVELOPMENTAL SYSTEMS
(2021)
Article
Acoustics
Young-Ji Choi
Summary: This study compared the acoustical effects of different masks on speech sounds, showing that surgical and KF94 masks performed better at high frequencies than N95 masks. Speech intelligibility scores decreased and perceived difficulty ratings increased under N95 mask conditions compared to no mask conditions.
Article
Audiology & Speech-Language Pathology
Milagros J. Fumero, Miriam Marrufo-Perez, Almudena Eustaquio-Martin, Enrique A. Lopez-Poveda
Summary: Verbal communication in social environments often requires dividing attention between two or more simultaneous talkers. The ability to do this may be diminished when the listener has limited access to acoustic cues or those cues are degraded. The present study investigated the ability of normal-hearing listeners to divide their attention and recognize speech from two simultaneous talkers in simulated free-field listening conditions, with and without reduced acoustic cues.
Article
Acoustics
Rahim Soleymanpour, Anthony J. Brammer, Hillary Marquis, Erin Heiney, Insoo Kim
Summary: The study investigates the use of speech envelope in noise as a control signal to modulate corrupted speech in order to reduce noise and potentially enhance speech quality and intelligibility. The results show that manipulating the temporal envelope of the control signal can lead to improved speech intelligibility when the control signal has a higher SNR than the signal being controlled. There were also small improvements in speech quality.
Article
Audiology & Speech-Language Pathology
Rachel J. Ellis, Jerker Ronnberg
Summary: The aim of this study was to investigate the correlation between sensitivity to temporal fine structure (TFS) and cognitive abilities and speech recognition in adult hearing aid users. The results showed a correlation between TFS sensitivity and executive function, but not with working memory. TFS was also found to be correlated with some speech recognition tasks, with no significant impact from signal processing condition, difficulty, or background noise type.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AUDIOLOGY
(2022)
Article
Neurosciences
Vanessa C. Irsik, Ala Almanaseer, Ingrid S. Johnsrude, Bjorn Herrmann
Summary: Older listeners have difficulty understanding speech in noise, possibly due to changes in sensitivity to speech-sound identity with age, which alters neural synchronization to envelope dynamics.
JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE
(2021)
Article
Audiology & Speech-Language Pathology
Rachel J. Ellis, Jerker Ronnberg
Summary: The study found significant correlations between sensitivity to temporal fine structure (TFS) and reading span test, as well as speech-in-noise recognition when noise reduction was used in participants with hearing impairment. However, these associations were not significant when the effects of age were controlled for. The results suggest that signal processing strategy may influence the relationship between TFS sensitivity and speech-in-noise recognition.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AUDIOLOGY
(2022)
Article
Geriatrics & Gerontology
Bjorn Herrmann, Burkhard Maess, Ingrid S. Johnsrude
Summary: Research found that older adults exhibit hyperresponsiveness to sound onsets in the auditory cortex compared to younger adults, while showing reduced sustained neural activity in processing sound patterns. This difference in neural populations between younger and older individuals could help explain age-related changes in hearing sensitivity.
NEUROBIOLOGY OF AGING
(2022)
Article
Psychology, Experimental
Stephen C. Van Hedger, Ingrid S. Johnsrude, Laura J. Batterink
Summary: Listeners' prior musical knowledge may interfere with the learning of new statistical regularities in novel tone sequences, with training on familiar instruments leading to reduced accuracy. Familiar intervals found in Western music may also bias judgments of the grammaticality of the sequences.
Article
Audiology & Speech-Language Pathology
Victoria Stenback, Erik Marsja, Rachel Ellis, Jerker Ronnberg
Summary: This study investigated the relationship between behavioral and self-report measures of listening in adverse conditions. The results showed correlations between behavioral measures and self-report scores in normally hearing individuals, but not in hearing aid users. These findings contribute to a better understanding of how self-report measures and behavioral results can be applied to everyday functioning.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AUDIOLOGY
(2023)
Article
Neurosciences
Harrison Ritz, Conor J. Wild, Ingrid S. Johnsrude
Summary: This study used functional magnetic resonance imaging to assess the processing of spoken sentences under distraction, and found that more cognitive effort is required when dealing with degraded speech. Moreover, the study showed that attention-related regions are affected when speech quality declines during processing of clear speech.
JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE
(2022)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Vanessa C. Irsik, Ingrid S. Johnsrude, Bjorn Herrmann
Summary: Fluctuating background sounds can enhance speech intelligibility. Recent research indicates that using continuous speech materials, such as spoken stories, can qualitatively change speech listening in noisy environments. Older adults experience less masking release compared to younger adults when listening to disconnected sentences and stories with randomized sentence order. However, when listening to engaging and coherent narratives, older adults show equal or greater masking release compared to younger adults.
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
(2022)
Article
Audiology & Speech-Language Pathology
Bjorn Herrmann, Burkhard Maess, Ingrid S. Johnsrude
Summary: This study investigates the effects of age on neural responses to different types of modulations, such as amplitude and frequency modulations. The results show that older adults have stronger neural synchronization but weaker sustained neural activity compared to younger adults. This indicates age differences in the sensitivity of the auditory system to features present in speech and other natural sounds.
Article
Audiology & Speech-Language Pathology
Emma Holmes, Ingrid S. Johnsrude
Summary: Speech is more intelligible when spoken by familiar voices, possibly due to more accurate representation of key voice characteristics. However, discrimination thresholds for familiar voices are not smaller. The results support cognitive accounts of speech perception.
Article
Neurosciences
Bjorn Herrmann, Burkhard Maess, Molly J. Henry, Jonas Obleser, Ingrid S. Johnsrude
Summary: Listening in everyday life requires the dynamic deployment of attention in order to conserve mental resources, especially for older adults. This study used electroencephalography and magnetoencephalography to investigate the neural and behavioral mechanics of attention regulation during listening and how aging affects these processes. The results showed that younger and older adults employ different neural control strategies to regulate attention in time under listening challenges, with a notable difference in the sources of alpha activity between age groups.
Article
Ophthalmology
Hidde Pielage, Adriana A. Zekveld, Sjors van de Ven, Sophia E. Kramer, Marnix Naber
Summary: This study assessed the impact of virtual reality on the pupil near response through two experiments. The first experiment found that the pupil near response is intact in head-mounted display mediated virtual reality. The second experiment found that the pupil near response is transient and does not result in sustained changes in pupil size.
JOURNAL OF EYE MOVEMENT RESEARCH
(2022)
Article
Neurosciences
Francisca Perea Perez, Douglas E. H. Hartley, Padraig T. Kitterick, Adriana A. A. Zekveld, Graham Naylor, Ian M. M. Wiggins
Summary: Due to impaired auditory signal, cochlear-implant (CI) users may have reduced speech intelligibility and increased listening effort compared to normally-hearing (NH) individuals. A novel approach to quantifying listening efficiency based on a linear ballistic accumulator model was used to examine the speech-in-noise performance of CI users and NH controls. The CI group showed lower listening efficiency than the NH group, and within the CI group, higher listening efficiency was associated with better cognition and more positive self-reported listening experiences.
FRONTIERS IN HUMAN NEUROSCIENCE
(2023)
Article
Audiology & Speech-Language Pathology
Hidde Pielage, Bethany. J. Plain, Gabrielle. H. Saunders, Niek. J. Versfeld, Thomas Lunner, Sophia. E. Kramer, Adriana. A. Zekveld
Summary: The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between copresence, speech-in-noise task performance, arousal, and effort in individuals with hearing loss. Pupil size measurements were used to assess arousal and effort. The results showed that task performance was not affected by copresence, but was related to the severity of hearing loss. Copresence was associated with increased baseline pupil size, indicating heightened arousal, but there were no changes in peak or mean pupil dilation. This suggests that copresence may increase arousal, but not necessarily in relation to the listening task itself.
Article
Audiology & Speech-Language Pathology
Patrycja Ksiazek, Adriana A. Zekveld, Lorenz Fiedler, Sophia E. Kramer, Dorothea Wendt
Summary: This study examines the effects of memory task demands and speech-to-noise ratio on effort allocation during speech identification in noise. The findings show that listeners dynamically reallocate effort from listening to memorizing under changing memory and acoustic demands. The study highlights the interplay of SNR and recall on effort.
