SPEECH RECOGNITION BY THE HEARING-IMPAIRED ELDERLY

许多老年人是听力受损的听力障碍者 足以对他们的语言理解能力产生不利影响。 拟议的项目研究了各种可能导致 听障人士的言语理解困难 老年人。拟议的项目使用横截面方法来检查 言语理解两个主要方面的年龄差异 加工：(1)外周编码机制；(2)认知加工。 在外围编码机制方面，实验将调查 许多听障人士的言语理解缺陷 老年人可以单用听力敏感度的丧失和 声刺激的编码表示在何种程度上 由感觉神经性听力损失引起的内部退化。模型的建立 单纯性感音神经性聋伴发的内源性退化 而复杂的声音刺激，包括语音信号，也将 已执行。 与年龄有关的语言认知加工的差异也将是 检查过了。一般认为，演讲的降级 刺激，无论是内部降解的(通过耳朵处理，具有 感觉神经性听力损失)或外部(噪声、混响、合成 语音)，将对更高级别的认知处理提出更高的要求 言语刺激物。进一步假设老年人的听力- 听力受损的人在认知速度方面普遍存在缺陷。 与相关的增加的处理需求交互的处理 使用降级的外围输入产生严重的语音理解 在这群人中的困难。认知缺陷的相互作用 将调查外设输入降级的处理 通过检验小学和中学学生的年龄差异 记忆和在使用上下文信息的内部和 外在退化的语言。

Many of the elderly are hearing impaired with the hearing impairment sufficient to have an adverse effect on their ability to understand speech. The proposed project examines various factors which may contribute to the speech-understanding difficulties experienced by the hearing-impaired elderly. The proposed project uses a cross-sectional approach to examine age-related differences in two primary aspects of the speech-understanding process: (1) peripheral encoding mechanisms; and (2) cognitive processing. In the area of peripheral encoding mechanisms, experiments will investigate haw much of the speech-understanding deficits of the hearing-impaired elderly can be explained by the loss of hearing sensitivity alone and the extent to which the encoded representation of the acoustic stimulus is degraded internally by the sensorineural hearing loss. Modeling of the internal degradation that accompanies sensorineural hearing loss for simple and complex acoustic stimuli, including speech signals, will also be performed. Age-related differences in the cognitive processing of speech will also be examined. It is generally hypothesized that degradation of the speech stimuli, whether degraded internally (processed through an ear with sensorineural hearing loss) or externally (noise, reverberation, synthetic speech), will place increased demands on higher-level cognitive processing of speech stimuli. It is further hypothesized that elderly hearing- impaired listeners have a general deficit in the speed of cognitive processing that interacts with the increased processing demands associated with the degraded peripheral input to produce severe speech-understanding difficulties in this population. The interaction of deficits in cognitive processing with degradation in peripheral input will be investigated through examination of age-related differences in primary and secondary memory and in the use of contextual information for internally and externally degraded speech.