Auditory-neurophysiological responses to speech during early childhood: Effects of background noise.
Auditory-neurophysiological responses to speech during early childhood: Effects of background noise.
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DOI：
10.1016/j.heares.2015.06.009
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发表时间：
2015-10
期刊：
影响因子：
2.8
通讯作者：
Kraus N
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
White-Schwoch T;Davies EC;Thompson EC;Woodruff Carr K;Nicol T;Bradlow AR;Kraus N
幼儿期是听觉学习的关键时期，在此期间，儿童不断地将声音映射到意义。但是学习很少发生在理想的听力条件下孩子们被迫在无情的嘈杂声中听。这种背景噪声会降低这些关键声音的神经编码，进而干扰听觉学习。尽管在幼儿时期强大和可靠的听觉处理的重要性，很少有人知道的神经生理学的语音处理在儿童这么小。为了更好地了解这些不利的听力情况下施加在语音编码在幼儿期的生理限制，辅音-元音音节在安静和背景噪声中的一个典型的发展学龄前儿童（年龄3-5岁）的一个队列中引起的神经生理反应。总体而言，响应在噪音中会退化：它们更小、在试验中不稳定、更慢，并且频谱内容和时间包络的编码较差。这些影响加剧了辅音过渡相对于元音，这表明，神经编码的spectrotemporally-dynamic语音功能是更脆弱的噪声比编码的静态功能，即使在儿童这么年轻。然而，语音时间精细结构的神经编码比时间包络信息的编码更能适应背景噪声的增加。两者合计，这些结果表明，噪音的地方在幼儿期的语音处理的神经生理学的限制，造成故障的语音声学的神经处理。这些结果可以解释为什么有些听众在噪音中理解语音有异常困难。语音引起的听觉神经生理反应提供客观的洞察力，在幼儿期的听力技能，反映在安静和噪音的神经编码的完整性，本文记录在这个年龄组的典型响应特性。这些规范的指标可能是有用的临床评估听觉处理困难在幼儿期。
Early childhood is a critical period of auditory learning, during which children are constantly mapping sounds to meaning. But learning rarely occurs under ideal listening conditions—children are forced to listen against a relentless din. This background noise degrades the neural coding of these critical sounds, in turn interfering with auditory learning. Despite the importance of robust and reliable auditory processing during early childhood, little is known about the neurophysiology underlying speech processing in children so young. To better understand the physiological constraints these adverse listening scenarios impose on speech sound coding during early childhood, auditory-neurophysiological responses were elicited to a consonant-vowel syllable in quiet and background noise in a cohort of typically-developing preschoolers (ages 3–5 yr). Overall, responses were degraded in noise: they were smaller, less stable across trials, slower, and there was poorer coding of spectral content and the temporal envelope. These effects were exacerbated in response to the consonant transition relative to the vowel, suggesting that the neural coding of spectrotemporally-dynamic speech features is more tenuous in noise than the coding of static features—even in children this young. Neural coding of speech temporal fine structure, however, was more resilient to the addition of background noise than coding of temporal envelope information. Taken together, these results demonstrate that noise places a neurophysiological constraint on speech processing during early childhood by causing a breakdown in neural processing of speech acoustics. These results may explain why some listeners have inordinate difficulties understanding speech in noise. Speech-elicited auditory-neurophysiological responses offer objective insight into listening skills during early childhood by reflecting the integrity of neural coding in quiet and noise; this paper documents typical response properties in this age group. These normative metrics may be useful clinically to evaluate auditory processing difficulties during early childhood.