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Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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Jan 2011

Volume 129, Issue 1, pp. EL1-547

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Spatial release from masking in normal-hearing children and children who use hearing aids

Teresa Y. C. Ching, Emma van Wanrooy, Harvey Dillon, and Lyndal Carter

J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 129, Issue 1, pp. 368-375 (2011); (8 pages) | Cited 1 time

Online Publication Date: 02 Feb 2011

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Listening to speech in competing sounds poses a major difficulty for children with impaired hearing. This study aimed to determine the ability of children (3–12 yr of age) to use spatial separation between target speech and competing babble to improve speech intelligibility. Fifty-eight children (31 with normal hearing and 27 with impaired hearing who use bilateral hearing aids) were assessed by word and sentence material. Speech reception thresholds (SRTs) were measured with speech presented from 0° azimuth, and competing babble from either 0° or ±90° azimuth. Spatial release from masking (SRM) was defined as the difference between SRTs measured with co-located speech and babble and SRTs measured with spatially separated speech and babble. On average, hearing-impaired children attained near-normal performance when speech and babble originated from the frontal source, but performed poorer than their normal-hearing peers when babble was spatially separated from target speech. On average, normal-hearing children obtained an SRM of 3 dB whereas children with hearing loss did not demonstrate SRM. Results suggest that hearing-impaired children may need enhancement in signal-to-noise ratio to hear speech in difficult listening conditions as well as normal-hearing children.
Show PACS
43.71.Ky Speech perception by the hearing impaired
43.66.Pn Binaural hearing
43.71.Ft Development of speech perception
43.66.Dc Masking

Perceiving unstressed vowels in foreign-accented English

Bettina Braun, Kristin Lemhöfer, and Nivedita Mani

J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 129, Issue 1, pp. 376-387 (2011); (12 pages) | Cited 1 time

Online Publication Date: 02 Feb 2011

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This paper investigated how foreign-accented stress cues affect on-line speech comprehension in British speakers of English. While unstressed English vowels are usually reduced to /ə/, Dutch speakers of English only slightly centralize them. Speakers of both languages differentiate stress by suprasegmentals (duration and intensity). In a cross-modal priming experiment, English listeners heard sentences ending in monosyllabic prime fragments—produced by either an English or a Dutch speaker of English—and performed lexical decisions on visual targets. Primes were either stress-matching (“ab” excised from absurd), stress-mismatching (“ab” from absence), or unrelated (“pro” from profound) with respect to the target (e.g., ABSURD). Results showed a priming effect for stress-matching primes only when produced by the English speaker, suggesting that vowel quality is a more important cue to word stress than suprasegmental information. Furthermore, for visual targets with word-initial secondary stress that do not require vowel reduction (e.g., CAMPAIGN), resembling the Dutch way of realizing stress, there was a priming effect for both speakers. Hence, our data suggest that Dutch-accented English is not harder to understand in general, but it is in instances where the language-specific implementation of lexical stress differs across languages.
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43.71.Sy Spoken language processing by humans
43.71.Es Vowel and consonant perception; perception of words, sentences, and fluent speech
43.71.An Models and theories of speech perception
43.71.Hw Cross-language perception of speech
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