Perception of spectral information by normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners
Judy R. Dubno, Donald D. Dirks, Amy B. Schaefer · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1984
Recent investigations have emphasized the importance of short-term onset spectra for consonant recognition. While examination of this acoustic cue, which emphasizes the multidimensional nature of the speech perception process, appears promising, the results have not yet led to a clear understanding of the speech recognition deficit encountered by hearing-impaired individuals. In a series of experiments, minimum syllable duration required for recognition of consonant-vowel syllables and the ability to categorize consonants by place of articulation was determined for normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners. Performance by normal-hearing listeners was excellent for stimuli > 20 ms, while results for hearing-impaired subjects varied widely, a finding which appears to be systematically related to differences in audibility of the speech signal. To measure syllable audibility, we examined the spectral information in the consonant-onset time period by measuring the onset spectrum (averaged over a 25.6-ms window) at the output of the test earphone. Acoustic spectra, rather than conventional electrical measurements, more accurately represent the spectral cues available in these short stimuli, and may provide insight into performance differences among hearing-impaired subjects. [Work supported by NINCDS.]