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Dec 1977

Volume 62, Issue S1, pp. S1-S102

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back to top Session GG. Psychological Acoustics IV: Applications of Speech to Hearing
Contributed Papers
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Tale of two standards — and what happened after (A)

Edith L. R. Corliss, Jean Roberts, Kenneth C. Stewart, and Elizabeth F. Moore

J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 62, Issue S1, pp. S74-S75 (1977); (2 pages)

Online Publication Date: 11 Aug 2005

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In 1969, the American National Standards Institute adopted a set of standards for normal, unimpaired hearing based upon data snmmarized by the International Standards Organization (ISO). In the USA, the American Standards Association (Later, ANSI) had maintained, since 1951, a set of standards based upon data derived from the National Health Survey of 1935–1936. There have been several additional National Health Surveys, covering groups of various ages, with medical examinations and carefully controlled pure‐tone audiometric testing making possible various criteria for selection of the normal range. Despite the wider range of ages and the use of various criteria for selection of normality, the results of these show rather close agreement with one another, and with the earlier survey data as well. The implicaitons of these results to the description of normal, unimpaired hearing will be discussed.
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Evaluation of a new protocol for production of hearing‐aid‐processed signals (A)

Gerald A. Studebaker and Robyn M. Cox

J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 62, Issue S1, pp. S75-S75 (1977); (1 page)

Online Publication Date: 11 Aug 2005

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A new protocol for obtaining and utilizing hearing‐aid‐processed signals in hearing‐aid research or hearing‐aid selection is described. Data are presented which illustrate the extent to which this procedure may be expected to result in a signal spectrum at the subject's eardrum which is the same as the spectrum the subject would have received if the hearing aid itself had been placed on his ear (a directly aided situation). An earlier investigation (Cox and Studebaker, 1977) indicated that the traditional protocol for the production and utilization of hearing‐aid‐processed signals resulted in substantial discrepancies between these two spectra. The data presented were obtained using KEMAR as the subject with a Zwislocki coupler as KEMAR's earcanal/eardrum. The discrepancy between directly aided and hearing‐aid‐processed spectra was typically ±2 dB for ear‐level hearing aids fitted using standard, vented, or open earmolds (in open earmold fittings only the amplified component of the directly aided spectrum is reproduced). [Work supported by NIH.]
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Multidimensional analysis of electroacoustic distortions in low‐fidelity circuitry (A)

Barbara Jill Bickford, A. Yonovitz, J. T. Lozar, and C. W. Mitchell

J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 62, Issue S1, pp. S75-S75 (1977); (1 page)

Online Publication Date: 11 Aug 2005

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Investigators have recently considered the correlation between electroacoustic characteristics of voice communication circuits and the intelligibility of speech signals passed through them. The detrimental effects on the perception of speech by electroacoustic distortions has not been unanimously ascribed to any one distortion. This study investigated listener perception of hearing‐aid transduced speech and music using a posteriori techniques of multidimensional scaling procedures. Evaluative data consisted of judgments of pairs of speech and music samples creating proximity matrices between 12 hearing aids. This perceptual data was submitted to INDSCAL to determine those electroacoustic characteristics germane to the decision process of judging quality in low‐fidelity circuitry. Correlational analysis was used to determine the regression structure of these electroacoustic measures on preference and quality judgments. The data indicated interactions were present between the speech and music judgments and electroacoustic distortions. Frequency response and bandwidth were evidenced as features influencing both speech and music with third‐harmonic distortion and internal noise being specific to speech quality assessment and transient distortion and phase distortion affecting listener perception of the music stimuli.
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Speech processing aid for persons with profound sensorineural hearing loss (A)

P. G. Schreiner

J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 62, Issue S1, pp. S75-S75 (1977); (1 page)

Online Publication Date: 11 Aug 2005

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A speech recoding aid has been developed to enhance speech discrimination by profoundly hearing‐impaired listeners. A unified system design employing amplitude compression, linear bandwidth compression, and equalization has been used to transform speech so that it more nearly conforms to the restricted frequency and amplitude response characteristics of an impaired‐hearing system. Time‐domain frequency compression of the speech signal by a factor of 4 was accomplished utilizing an analog pitch detection technique to allow real‐time pitch‐synchronous processing during voiced speech. An initial speech discrimination experiment using the recoded speech was performed with normal‐hearing subjects. At the end of a three‐period test sequence, the average discrimination scores for vowel contrasts were 92% and for consonant contrasts 75%. [Work supported by NIH.]
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Speech intelligibility in noise with ear protectors (A)

S. M. Abel, P. W. Alberti, K. Riko, and R. Madsen

J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 62, Issue S1, pp. S75-S75 (1977); (1 page)

Online Publication Date: 11 Aug 2005

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This research investigates the effect of ear protectors on the intelligibility of speech in noise. The listeners are adults, 35–65 years old, with normal hearing, bilateral high frequency or flat loss between 500 and 4000 Hz. They may be fluent or poorly conversant with spoken English. Taped lists of 25 words are presented free field under a variety of conditions in which the signal‐to‐noise ratio (+5 and −5 dB), the spectrum of the background noise (white versus crowd), and the presence of ear protection are varied. Preliminary data indicate that in normal listeners the number of words correctly repeated decreases as signal‐to‐noise ratio decreases and that speech perception is poorer in noise than in quiet. When ear protectors are worn for speech presented in crowd noise some improvement in hearing is evident. In contrast, for this condition subjects with a high‐frequency loss show a marked deterioration in performance. [Work supported by Ontario Min. Health.]
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Effect of contralateral and ipsilateral noise on the quality of monaural speech (A)

Linda Pierce and Michael Pavel

J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 62, Issue S1, pp. S75-S75 (1977); (1 page)

Online Publication Date: 11 Aug 2005

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This study was carried out to examine certain effects of ambient noise on the quality of speech communication over telephone channels. The stimuli consisted of monaurally presented speech and accompanying circuit noise and binaurally presented background noise. The background noise and the circuit noise had identical spectral characteristics. The stimuli were presented over headphones for good stimulus control. The ambient noise was represented by background noise which remained constant over a block of trials. The variables manipulated over trials were speech level, circuit noise level, and the ipsilateral and contralateral background noise. On each trial subjects heard two phonetically balanced sentences and were asked to respond on a ten‐point quality rating scale. The data were analyzed in terms of averages of the ratings. This analysis indicates that the circuit noise is more detrimental to the quality judgments than the identical level of ipsilateral background noise although the two noises have identical physical characteristics. In addition, as expected from contralateral masking studies, the contralateral background noise has only minimal effect on the ratings compared to the ipsilateral noise.
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Listener‐assessed intelligibility of hearing‐aid‐processed speech (A)

Jerry L. Punch and Mary T. Howard

J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 62, Issue S1, pp. S76-S76 (1977); (1 page)

Online Publication Date: 11 Aug 2005

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The capacity of listeners to yield preferences for hearing aids that provide maximally intelligible speech was evaluated by the method of paired comparisons. Discourse, spoken by a male talker with General American dialect, was processed by five hearing aids under conditions of quiet and a background of multitalker babble. Hearing‐aid‐processed revised CID sentences, spoken by the same male talker and embedded in the same multitalker background, were used as stimuli in establishing criterion measures of intelligibility. All stimuli were tape recorded and delivered via nonaural earphone to 90 normal listeners. The relationship between listener assessments of intelligibility for discourse and objective measurements of sentence intelligibility was evaluated by correlation analysis. Clinical implications of the results will be discussed. Findings represent preliminary evidence that measures of listener‐assessed intelligibility may offer a valid, reliable, and rapid means of evaluating behavioral performance under the wide variety of electroacoustic characteristics available in a master hearing aid. [Work supported by VA.]
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Progress in the development of a tactile aid for the deaf (A)

B. L. Scott and C. L. De Filippo

J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 62, Issue S1, pp. S76-S76 (1977); (1 page)

Online Publication Date: 11 Aug 2005

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Eight normal‐bearing adults learned to lipread with one of two lipreading aids. Both aids consisted of three spectral channels: a fixed high‐frequency and a midfrequency channel for sibilants and bursts and a low‐frequency channel for coding the first formant of vowels. Both aids relied on changes in sensation rather than locus of stimulation for transmitting spectral information and the amplitude‐time envelope. One aid had electrotactile and vibrotactile transducers and the other had only vibrators for transducers. Performance was measured with our “tracking” procedure (delayed shadowing) using ongoing text. Half the subjects performed the tracking task for the first four hours lipreading alone and the other half with one or the other of the aids. Aided subjects then changed to lipreading alone and unaided subjects to an aided condition. Results indicate that the aids can enhance tracking scores and can facilitate the learning of lipreading skills. [Supported by NS 03856.]
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Real‐time synthesis of optical lip patterns from vowel sounds (A)

N. P. Erber

J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 62, Issue S1, pp. S76-S76 (1977); (1 page)

Online Publication Date: 11 Aug 2005

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An analog circuit has been constructed to convert speech (vowels) to Lissajous‐type oscilloscope patterns in real time. The method is like that described by D. W. Boston [Br. J. Audiol. 7, 95–101 (1973)], but includes important circuit modifications to improve naturalness of lip outline and articulatory change. The speech signal receives pre‐emphasis resembling ear canal resonance and is split into two channels. Two voltages, one proportional to 200–1000‐Hz energy (F1) and the other proportional to 200–3000‐Hz energy (F2 in front vowels; F1 in back vowels), are generated to control a multiplier and divider, respectively, which vary levels of sinusoidal signals to form the height and width of the lip outline. Resulting patterns are comparable to lip shapes of vowels in natural speech. Vowel‐confusion matrices obtained by lipreading the oscilloscope display (for speech input) are similar to those obtained by lipreading the talker's face directly. The device has been employed in studies of auditory‐visual speech perception, and has potential as a telephone communication aid for the deaf. [Work supported by NINCDS.]
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Translating hearing aid for “deaf” patients with nearly normal ultra‐audiometric hearing (A)

Henry Halperin, John Cullen, Charles Berlin, and Mead Killion

J. Acoust. Soc. Am. Volume 62, Issue S1, pp. S76-S76 (1977); (1 page)

Online Publication Date: 11 Aug 2005

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There have been many attempts at speech transposing for the deaf by bringing speech information into lower‐frequency bands to make use of residual low‐frequency hearing. Because of the unusual hearing loss configuration referred to in the previous paper, it was decided to try translation in the opposite direction (i.e., to the high‐frequency residual hearing band). This presentation will describe the hearing aid, construction, present some speech recorded through the aid, and discuss some considerations taken to insure the aid did not jeopardize the patients' residual hearing. Patients' experiences with the aid (lowering of speech detection threshold, distinguishing tone glides, and increased awareness of the environment) will also be discussed.
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