Word recognition within a linguistic context: effects of age, hearing acuity, verbal ability, and cognitive function.
Word recognition within a linguistic context: effects of age, hearing acuity, verbal ability, and cognitive function.
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语言背景下的单词识别：年龄，听力敏锐度，言语能力和认知功能的影响。
DOI：
10.1097/aud.0b013e31822f680f
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发表时间：
2012-03
期刊：
影响因子：
3.7
通讯作者：
Wingfield A
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Benichov J;Cox LC;Tun PA;Wingfield A
在传统的语境对口语单词识别影响的研究中，参与者都是大学生。当老年人被包括在内时，他们通常在语言能力或教育年限方面与这些年轻人相匹配。虽然这可能是消除混杂变量的一个很好的策略，但目前还不清楚这些研究的结果如何扩展到年轻人和老年人的普通人群。本研究的目的是考察成人年龄、听力、言语能力和认知功能对口语单词识别中语境使用的影响。53名年龄在19岁到89岁之间的成年人听到了简短的句子，其中最后一个词被多人喋喋不休掩盖了。以2分贝的步长逐渐降低胡言乱语的水平，直到句子的最后一个词能够被正确识别。已公布的标准被用来构建句子集，在这些句子中，相同的单词可以根据语言上下文以三个水平的可预测性(低、中、高)听到。在第四种情况下(没有上下文)，单词前面有一个中性载体短语。参与者接受了言语能力测试，重点是词汇知识，评估认知功能的简短测试组合，以及基于纯音阈值的听力评估。参与者的听力从正常到中度听力损失不等。结果表明，正确的单词识别所需的信噪比与该单词在句子上下文中出现的概率成反比。听力损失对在中性语境中听到的单词的单词识别有显著影响，但听力敏锐度的影响随着目标单词的语境概率的增加而逐渐减弱。分层多元回归表明，听力在背景概率的最低三个水平上解释了很大程度的差异，但在测试的最高概率水平上没有解释。在所有测试的语境概率水平上，认知功能对获得的单词识别成绩的方差有显著的贡献。此外，即使在考虑了听力和认知功能后，参与者的年龄也解释了很大程度的差异。在测试参与者所代表的范围内的言语能力对任何上下文条件下的识别表现都没有显著的贡献。外围听力只解释了单词识别准确率差异的一部分，认知功能和参与者年龄的个体差异也造成了显著差异。结果表明，使用语境来辅助口语识别的能力是足够强大的，以至于英语母语者的言语能力相对较大的范围对识别性能没有影响。
Participants in traditional studies of the effects of context on spoken word recognition have been university undergraduates. When older adults have been included, they have typically been matched with these young adults for verbal ability or years of education. Although this may be a good strategy for eliminating confounding variables, it is not clear how results of these studies may extend to the general population of young and older adults. The objective of this study was to examine the effects of adult age, hearing acuity, verbal ability and cognitive function on the use of linguistic context in spoken word recognition. Fifty-three adults, aged 19 to 89, heard short sentences in which the final word was masked by multitalker babble. The level of babble was progressively reduced in 2 dB steps until the sentence-final word could be correctly identified. Published norms were used to construct sets of sentences in which the same word could be heard with three levels of predictability (low, medium, high) based on the linguistic context. In a fourth condition (no context) the words were preceded by a neutral carrier phrase. Participants received tests of verbal ability, with an emphasis on vocabulary knowledge, a brief test battery to assess cognitive function, and an assessment of hearing acuity based on pure-tone thresholds. Participants’ hearing acuity ranged from normal acuity to moderate hearing loss. Results showed that the signal-to-noise ratio necessary for correct word recognition varied inversely with the probability of that word occurring in the sentence context. Hearing loss had a significant effect on word recognition for words heard in a neutral context, but the effect of hearing acuity diminished progressively with increasing contextual probability of the target word. Hierarchical multiple regressions showed that hearing acuity accounted for a significant amount of the variance at the lowest three levels of contextual probability but not at the highest probability level tested. Cognitive function contributed significantly to the obtained variance in word recognition performance at all levels of contextual probability tested. Moreover, participant age accounted for a significant amount of variance even after hearing acuity and cognitive function were taken into account. Verbal ability in the range represented by the test participants did not contribute significantly to recognition performance in any of the context conditions. Peripheral hearing acuity accounted for only a part of the variance in word recognition accuracy, with significant variance also contributed by individual differences in cognitive function and participant age. Results showed the ability to use linguistic context to aid spoken word recognition is sufficiently robust that a relatively wide range in verbal ability among native English speakers had no effect on recognition performance.