Determining the energetic and informational components of speech-on-speech masking in listeners with sensorineural hearing loss
Abstract
The ability to identify the words spoken by one talker masked by two or four competing talkers was tested in young-adult listeners with sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL). In a reference/baseline condition, masking speech was colocated with target speech, target and masker talkers were female, and the masker was intelligible. Three comparison conditions included replacing female masker talkers with males, time-reversal of masker speech, and spatial separation of sources. All three variables produced significant release from masking. To emulate energetic masking (EM), stimuli were subjected to ideal time-frequency segregation retaining only the time-frequency units where target energy exceeded masker energy. Subjects were then tested with these resynthesized “glimpsed stimuli.” For either two or four maskers, thresholds only varied about 3 dB across conditions suggesting that EM was roughly equal. Compared to normal-hearing listeners from an earlier study [Kidd, Mason, Swaminathan, Roverud, Clayton, and Best, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 140, 132–144 (2016)], SNHL listeners demonstrated both greater energetic and informational masking as well as higher glimpsed thresholds. Individual differences were correlated across masking release conditions suggesting that listeners could be categorized according to their general ability to solve the task. Overall, both peripheral and central factors appear to contribute to the higher thresholds for SNHL listeners.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 2019
- Source ID
- 10.1121/1.5087555
Entities
People
- Christine R. Mason
- Elin Roverud
- Gerald Kidd Jr.
- H. Steven Colburn
- Jayaganesh Swaminathan
- Kameron Clayton
- Todd Jennings
- Virginia Best
Organizations
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research
- Boston University
- National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders