Older adult recognition error patterns when listening to interrupted speech and speech in steady-state noise

The effect of modality onset asynchrony and processing time on the recognition of text-supplemented speech

This study examined the effect of modality onset asynchrony and response processing time for the recognition of text-supplemented speech. Speech and text were periodically interrupted by noise or black bars, respectively, to preserve 50% of the sentence and presented in unimodal and multimodal conditions. Sentence recognition and response errors were assessed for responses made simultaneous with the stimulus or after its presentation. Increased processing time allowed for the cognitive repair of initial response errors in working memory. Text-supplemented speech was best recognized with minimal temporal asynchrony. Overall, text supplementation facilitated the recognition of degraded speech when provided sufficient processing time.

Perception of interrupted speech and text: Listener and modality factors

Interrupted speech and text are used to measure processes of linguistic closure that are important for recognition under adverse backgrounds. The present study compared recognition of speech and text that had been periodically interrupted with matched amounts of silence or white space, respectively. Recognition thresholds were obtained for younger and older adults with normal or simulated/impaired hearing and correlated with recognition of speech-in-babble. Results demonstrate domain-general, age-related processes in linguistic closure affecting high context sentences and domain-specific, hearing-related processes in speech recognition affecting low context sentences. Text recognition captures domain-general linguistic processes in speech recognition susceptible to age-related effects.

Phonological and semantic similarity of misperceived words in babble: Effects of sentence context, age, and hearing loss

This study investigated how age and hearing loss influence the misperceptions made when listening to sentences in babble. Open-set responses to final words in sentences with low and high context were analyzed for younger adults with normal hearing and older adults with normal or impaired hearing. All groups performed similarly in overall accuracy but differed in error type. Misperceptions for all groups were analyzed according to phonological and semantic properties. Comparisons between groups indicated that misperceptions for older adults were more influenced by phonological factors. Furthermore, older adults with hearing loss omitted more responses. Overall, across all groups, results suggest that phonological confusions most explain misperceptions in low context sentences. In high context sentences, the meaningful sentence context appears to provide predictive cues that reduce misperceptions. When misperceptions do occur, responses tend to have greater semantic similarity and lesser phonological similarity to the target, compared to low context sentences. In this way, semantic similarity may index a postdictive process by which ambiguities due to phonological confusions are resolved to conform to the semantic context of the sentence. These patterns demonstrate that context, age, and hearing loss affect the misperceptions, and potential sentence interpretation, made when listening to sentences in babble.