The present study examined to what extent proficiency in a non-native language influences speech perception in noise. We explored how English proficiency affected native (Swedish) and non-native (English) speech perception in four speech reception threshold (SRT) conditions, including two energetic (stationary, fluctuating noise) and two informational (two-talker babble Swedish, two-talker babb...

To hear out a conversation against other talkers listeners overcome energetic and informational masking. Largely attributed to top-down processes, information masking has also been demonstrated using unintelligible speech and amplitude-modulated maskers suggesting bottom-up processes. We examined the role of speech-like amplitude modulations in information masking using a spatial masking releas...

The long-term goal of this research is to develop tactual aids for persons who are profoundly deaf or deaf-blind to serve as a substitute for hearing in the reception of speech and environmental sounds. This research can contribute to improved speech reception and production, language competence, and environmental-sound recognition in such individuals. This research is also relevant to the deve...

This study evaluates speech discrimination ability, as determined by a standard test of speech reception in noise, for one type hearing defect commonly found in military personnel, namely, noise-induced high-frequency hearing loss. Enlisted submariners with high-frequency hearing loss (average of 22, 45 and 60 decibels at 3, 4 and 6 kiloHertz, respectively) had poorer scores than a normal-heari...

This study evaluates speech discrimination ability, as determined by a standard test of speech reception in noise, for one type hearing defect commonly found in military personnel, namely, noise-induced high-frequency hearing loss. Enlisted submariners with high-frequency hearing loss (average of 22, 45 and 60 decibels at 3, 4 and 6 kiloHertz, respectively) had poorer scores than a normal-heari...

Owing to its subjective nature, behavioral pure-tone audiometry often is an unreliable testing method in uncooperative subjects, and assessing the true hearing threshold becomes difficult. In such cases, objective tests are used for hearing-threshold determination (i.e., auditory brainstem evoked potentials [ABEP] and frequency-specific auditory evoked potentials: slow negative response at 10 m...

For normal-hearing listeners, speech intelligibility improves if speech and noise are spatially separated. While this spatial release from masking has already been quantified in normal-hearing listeners in many studies, it is less clear how spatial release from masking changes in cochlear implant listeners with and without access to low-frequency acoustic hearing. Spatial release from masking d...

Synopsis Sensorineural hearing loss, is associated with increased forward and backward masking of weak acoustic sub-segments by strong ones, thereby degrading the reception of important cues for identification of consonants. Employment of inter-aural switching, by splitting the speech temporally and presenting alternate segments to the two ears may help in reducing the effect of temporal maskin...

OBJECTIVE Hearing loss at high frequencies produces perceptual difficulties and is often an early sign of a more general hearing loss. This study reports the development and validation of two new speech-based hearing screening tests in English that focus on detecting hearing loss at frequencies above 2000 Hz. DESIGN The Internet-delivered, speech-in noise tests used closed target-word sets of...