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Infant speech-sound discrimination in noise
R J Nozza1, R N Rossman, L C Bond
1Department of Otolaryngology, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pennsylvania.
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
|January 1, 1990
Summary
Infants struggle more than adults with speech-sound discrimination in noisy environments. This highlights concerns about noise impacting early language acquisition.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Auditory Perception
- Speech Processing
Background:
- Understanding speech in noisy environments is crucial for language development.
- Infants' auditory systems are still developing, potentially making them more vulnerable to noise.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the impact of noise on speech-sound discrimination in 7- to 11-month-old infants.
- To compare infant performance with adult performance in varying signal-to-noise ratios (S/N).
- To evaluate the efficacy of an adaptive threshold procedure for developmental research.
Main Methods:
- A conditioned head-turn procedure was used to assess speech-sound discrimination (/ba/ vs /ga/).
- Participants (infants and adults) were tested at multiple signal-to-noise ratios (S/N).
- An adaptive threshold procedure with a 3-dB step size was employed for detailed analysis.
Main Results:
- Infants required a significantly higher S/N than adults to achieve comparable speech-sound discrimination.
- Performance for both groups improved monotonically with increasing S/N.
- The adaptive threshold procedure yielded psychometric functions with identical slopes for infants and adults.
Conclusions:
- Infants are at a disadvantage compared to adults when discriminating speech in noise.
- Environmental noise may pose a significant challenge to early language acquisition.
- The adaptive threshold procedure is an efficient tool for assessing auditory discrimination in developmental studies.