Overt and Covert Aspects of Adult Speech Perception

1977 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip A. Morse ◽  
Lewis A. Leavitt ◽  
Cynthia L. Miller ◽  
Rhonda C. Romero

The relationship between verbal report and cardiac orienting response measures of speech discrimination in adult listeners was examined in two experiments using stimuli and paradigms previously employed in studies of infant speech perception. The results of Experiment I revealed that all listeners, those who reported discrimination of a synthetic [ba-ga] change (Group D) as well as those who did not (Group ND), demonstrated cardiac discrimination of the stimulus shift. However, this pattern of cardiac activity, both at stimulus onset and the shift, was found to be different in these two groups of listeners. Experiment II replicated the Group D results using a slightly different cardiac paradigm and quasinatural speech syllables. The implications of these findings for developmental research on speech perception with older infants, children, and populations with language disorders are discussed.

1977 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 533-545 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cynthia L. Miller ◽  
Philip A. Morse ◽  
Michael F. Dorman

The present study investigated burst cue discrimination in 3- to 4-month-old infants with the natural speech stimuli [bu] and [gu]. The experimental stimuli consisted of either a [bu] or a [gu] burst attached to the formants of the [bu], such that the sole difference between the two stimuli was the initial burst cue. Infants were tested using a cardiac orienting response (OR) paradigm which consisted of 20 tokens of one stimulus (e.g. [bu]) followed by 20 tokens of the second syllable (20/20 paradigm). An OR to the stimulus change revealed that young infants can discriminate burst cue differences in speech stimuli. Discussion of the results focused on asymmetries observed in the data and the relationship of these findings to our previous failure to demonstrate burst discrimination using the habituation/dishabituation cardiac measure generally employed with older infants.


1982 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 289-302 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca E. Eilers ◽  
William J. Gavin ◽  
D. Kimbrough Oller

ABSTRACTThe possibility that early linguistic experience affects infant speech perception was investigated in a cross-linguistic study with naturally produced speech stimuli. Using the Visually Reinforced Infant Speech Discrimination paradigm, three contrasts were presented to Spanish-and English-learning infants 6–8 months of age. Both groups of infants showed statistically significant discrimination of two contrasts, English and Czech. Only the Spanish-learning infants provided evidence of discrimination of the Spanish contrast. The groups discriminated the English contrast at similarly high levels, but the Spanish-learning infants showed significantly higher performance than the English on both the Spanish and the Czech contrast. The results indicate that early experience does affect early discrimination, and further (since the stimuli were natural) that the effect may be of practical consequence in language learning.


2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (19) ◽  
pp. 4566
Author(s):  
Kristin M. Uhler ◽  
Alexander M. Kaizer ◽  
Kerry A. Walker ◽  
Phillip M. Gilley

(1) Background: Research has demonstrated that early intervention for children who are hard-of-hearing (CHH) facilitates improved language development. Early speech perception abilities may impact CHH outcomes and guide future intervention. The objective of this study was to examine the use of a conditioned head turn (CHT) task as a measure of speech discrimination in CHH using a clinically feasible protocol. (2) Methods: Speech perception was assessed for a consonant and vowel contrast among 57 CHH and 70 children with normal hearing (CNH) aged 5–17 months using a CHT paradigm. (3) Results: Regardless of hearing status, 74% of CHH and 77% of CNH could discriminate /a-i/, and 55% of CHH and 56% of CNH could discriminate /ba-da/. Regression models revealed that both CHH and CNH performed better on /ba-da/ at 70 dBA compared to 50 dBA. Performance by hearing age showed no speech perception differences for CNH and children with mild hearing loss for either contrast. However, children with hearing losses ≥ 41 dB HL performed significantly poorer than CNH for /a-i/. (4) Conclusions: This study demonstrates the clinical feasibility of assessing early speech perception in infants with hearing loss and replicates previous findings of speech perception abilities among CHH and CNH.


2021 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mai M. El Ghazaly ◽  
Mona I. Mourad ◽  
Nesrine H. Hamouda ◽  
Mohamed A. Talaat

Abstract Background Speech perception in cochlear implants (CI) is affected by frequency resolution, exposure time, and working memory. Frequency discrimination is especially difficult in CI. Working memory is important for speech and language development and is expected to contribute to the vast variability in CI speech reception and expression outcome. The aim of this study is to evaluate CI patients’ consonants discrimination that varies in voicing, manner, and place of articulation imparting differences in pitch, time, and intensity, and also to evaluate working memory status and its possible effect on consonant discrimination. Results Fifty-five CI patients were included in this study. Their aided thresholds were less than 40 dBHL. Consonant speech discrimination was assessed using Arabic consonant discrimination words. Working memory was assessed using Test of Memory and Learning-2 (TOMAL-2). Subjects were divided according to the onset of hearing loss into prelingual children and postlingual adults and teenagers. Consonant classes studied were fricatives, stops, nasals, and laterals. Performance on the high frequency CVC words was 64.23% ± 17.41 for prelinguals and 61.70% ± 14.47 for postlinguals. These scores were significantly lower than scores on phonetically balanced word list (PBWL) of 79.94% ± 12.69 for prelinguals and 80.80% ± 11.36 for postlinguals. The lowest scores were for the fricatives. Working memory scores were strongly and positively correlated with speech discrimination scores. Conclusions Consonant discrimination using high frequency weighted words can provide a realistic tool for assessment of CI speech perception. Working memory skills showed a strong positive relationship with speech discrimination abilities in CI.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 220-226
Author(s):  
Yew-Song Cheng ◽  
Mario A. Svirsky

The presence of spiral ganglion cells (SGCs) is widely accepted to be a prerequisite for successful speech perception with a cochlear implant (CI), because SGCs provide the only known conduit between the implant electrode and the central auditory system. By extension, it has been hypothesized that the number of SGCs might be an important factor in CI outcomes. An impressive body of work has been published on findings from the laborious process of collecting temporal bones from CI users and counting the number of SGCs to correlate those numbers with speech perception scores, but the findings thus far have been conflicting. We performed a meta-analysis of all published studies with the hope that combining existing data may help us reach a more definitive conclusion about the relationship between SGC count and speech perception scores in adults.


1993 ◽  
Vol 107 (3) ◽  
pp. 179-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. R. Cullen ◽  
M. J. Cinnamond

The relationship between diabetes and senbsorineural hearing loss has been disputed. This study compares 44 insulin-dependent diabetics with 38 age and sex matched controls. All had pure tone and speech audiometry performed, with any diabetics showing sensorineural deafness undergoing stapedial reflecx decat tests. In 14 diabetics stapedial reflex tests showed no tone decay in any patient, but seven showed evidence of recruitment. Analysis of vaiance showed the diabetics to be significantly deafer than the control population.The hearing loss affected high frequencies in both sexes, but also low frequencies in the male. Speech discrimination scores showed no differences. Further analysis by sex showed the males to account for most of the differences. Analysys of the audiograms showered mostly a high tone loss. Finally duration of disbetes, insulin dosage and family history of diabtes were not found to have a significant effect on threshold.


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