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Infant Auditory Processing and Event-related Brain Oscillations
Published on: July 1, 2015
Abnormal processing of temporal fine structure in speech for frequencies where absolute thresholds are normal
Christian Lorenzi1, Louis Debruille, Stéphane Garnier
1Equipe Audition, LPP CNRS, Universite Paris Descartes, and DEC, Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris, France. lorenzi@psycho.univ-paris5.fr
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
|January 29, 2009
Summary
Hearing loss affects speech processing. Even with normal low-frequency hearing, impaired high-frequency hearing degrades temporal fine structure (TFS) speech perception, impacting understanding.
Area of Science:
- Audiology
- Speech Processing
- Psychoacoustics
Background:
- Individuals with high-frequency hearing loss often have normal low-frequency hearing.
- Speech perception relies on various acoustic cues, including temporal envelope and temporal fine structure (TFS).
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how high-frequency hearing loss impacts the perception of temporal fine structure (TFS) in speech.
- To compare speech identification performance between normal-hearing and hearing-impaired individuals using different speech processing methods.
Main Methods:
- Nonsense syllable identification was tested in normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners.
- Speech stimuli included intact speech, temporally enveloped speech (E speech), and temporally fine-structured speech (TFS speech).
- Listeners had normal hearing below 1.5 kHz, with impairment at higher frequencies.
Main Results:
- Hearing-impaired listeners performed slightly worse on intact and E speech, though not significantly.
- Performance on TFS speech was significantly poorer in hearing-impaired listeners, with most performing at chance.
- Degraded TFS processing occurred even at frequencies with normal absolute hearing thresholds.
Conclusions:
- High-frequency hearing loss can impair the processing of speech's temporal fine structure (TFS).
- This degradation occurs despite normal hearing thresholds at lower frequencies relevant to TFS perception.
- TFS perception is crucial for speech understanding in individuals with specific hearing loss profiles.
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