Learning speech-in-noise discrimination in adult humans

This manuscript reports the results of two studies on development of a test bank of sentences for use in study of learning of speech-in-noise (SIN) discrimination. Sentences were derived from the sentence lists of Bench et al., 1979 [Bench, J., Kowal, A., Bamford, J., 1979. The BKB (Bamford-Kowal-Bench) sentence lists for partially-hearing children. Brit. J. Audiol. 13, 108-112]. In the first study these sentences were grouped into three different lists (each of 40 sentences) based on their previously-determined speech reception thresholds (SRTs), and used to study SIN discrimination. In each test with 40 sentences in the SIN task, within-session performance asymptoted rapidly, independent of masker type, sex of subjects, and type of sentence. Then, in a second study, six lists of sentences were created to study learning of SIN discrimination, in a new group of subjects. It was found that across-session learning was rapid regardless of noise type, and the same general pattern of learning occurred regardless of noise type; however the amount of learning differed, with a slightly greater amount of learning occurring in the condition with the more difficult noise masker.