Journal Article

The Clear-Speech Benefit for School-Age Children: Speech-in-Noise and Speech-in-Speech Recognition

Porter, Heather L., Calandruccio, Lauren, Leibold, Lori J., Buss, Emily

2020

Overview

Purpose: Talkers often modify their speech when communicating with individuals who struggle to understand speech, such as listeners with hearing loss. This study evaluated the benefit of clear speech in school-age children and adults with normal hearing for speech-in-noise and speech-in-speech recognition. Method: Masked sentence recognition thresholds were estimated for school-age children and adults using an adaptive procedure. In Experiment 1, the target and masker were summed and presented over a loudspeaker located directly in front of the listener. The masker was either speech-shaped noise or two-talker speech, and target sentences were produced using a clear or conversational speaking style. In Experiment 2, stimuli were presented over headphones. The two-talker speech masker was diotic (M[subscript 0]). Clear and conversational target sentences were presented either in-phase (T[subscript 0]) or out-of-phase (T[subscript [pi]]) between the two ears. The M[subscript 0]T[subscript [pi]] condition introduces a segregation cue that was expected to improve performance. Results: For speech presented over a single loudspeaker (Experiment 1), the clear-speech benefit was independent of age for the noise masker, but it increased with age for the two-talker masker. Similar age effects for the two-talker speech masker were seen under headphones with diotic presentation (M[subscript 0]T[subscript 0]), but comparable clear-speech benefit as a function of age was observed with a binaural cue to facilitate segregation (M[subscript 0]T[subscript [pi]]). Conclusions: Consistent with prior research, children showed a robust clear-speech benefit for speech-in-noise recognition. Immaturity in the ability to segregate target from masker speech may limit young children's ability to benefit from clear-speech modifications for speech-in-speech recognition under some conditions. When provided with a cue that facilitates segregation, children as young as 4-7 years of age derived a clear-speech benefit in a two-talker masker that was similar to the benefit experienced by adults.

• Publisher: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association
• Subject: Acknowledgment / Acoustic properties / Acoustics / Adults / Age / Age differences / Age effects / Attention / Auditory Perception / Auditory Stimuli / Auditory Tests / Auditory thresholds / Children / Children & youth / Cognitive Processes / College Students / Comparative analysis / Conversation / Cues / Deafness / Ears / Educational aspects / Elementary school students / English / Experiments / Headphones / Hearing / Hearing (Physiology) / Hearing disorders / Hearing loss / Learning / Learning disabilities / Listeners / Listening / Listening comprehension / Maturity / Methods / Native Language / Native Speakers / Noise / Noise control / Phonemes / Recognition / Schools / Segregation / Sentences / Short Term Memory / Sound masking / Speaking / Speech / Speech Communication / Speech recognition / Speech styles / Speech, Intelligibility of / Speeches, lectures and essays / Stimuli / Thresholds / Voice recognition / Vowels / Word Recognition / Young Children