SUSCEPTIBILITY TO AND RELEASE FROM MASKING IN INFANCY AND CHILDHOOD

婴儿期和儿童期对掩蔽的敏感性和解除

• 批准号: 9103723
• 负责人: Lori J. Leibold
• 金额: $ 41.84万
• 依托单位: FATHER FLANAGAN'S BOYS' HOME
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2011-03-01 至 2021-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9103723
• 关键词: Acoustics; Address; Adult; Age; Auditory; Awareness; Child; Child Support; Childhood; Communication; Complex; Cues; Development; Disadvantaged; Employee Strikes; Environment; Environmental air flow; Exposure to; Goals; Grant; Grouping; Hearing; Hearing Aids; Infant; Intervention; Knowledge; Learning; Life; Masks; Mediating; Noise; Outcome; Performance; Predisposition; Process; Public Health; Research; School-Age Population; Self-Help Devices; Sensorineural Hearing Loss; Signal Transduction; Source; Speech; Speech Development; Speech Perception; Stimulus; System; Testing; Time; Wireless Technology; Work; age effect; age related; base; behavior observation; digital; early adolescence; early experience; experience; hearing impairment; improved; infancy; insight; peer; public health relevance; research study; segregation; sensory system; skills; sound; speech recognition

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Infants and children are at a disadvantage relative to adults when listening to speech in the presence of competing sounds. These developmental effects can be striking when the competing sounds are also speech, and are substantially larger for children with hearing loss than children with normal hearing. Despite growing awareness that infants and children spend the majority of their days in multi-talker environments, little is currently known about the specific factors that limit children's hearing in competing speech. In addition, it is unclear how hearing loss impacts children's ability to "hear out" a target talker when multiple people are speaking at the same time. The long-term goal of this project is to understand the maturation of hearing in complex acoustic environments that contain multiple sources of competing sounds. The proposed experiments will isolate factors that limit children's abilities to separate target from competing speech and will evaluate the extent to which speech-on-speech recognition improves for children with hearing loss when acoustic cues thought to promote sound segregation are provided. Aim 1 will evaluate the extent to which children capitalize on glimpses of improved signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), associated with masker fluctuations, to recognize target speech in a speech masker. It is hypothesized that children will benefit less from modulation than adults due to their reduced auditory experience. Aim 2 will evaluate the relative impact of listener factors such as age and degree of hearing loss on the development of speech-on-speech masking for children with congenital hearing loss. It is hypothesized that variable and/or degraded auditory experience as a result of hearing loss interferes with the maturation of perceptual processing abilities, such as those related to the segregation of target from background speech. Aim 3 will evaluate the practical consequences of enhancing acoustic cues thought to aid in the segregation of sounds for children with hearing loss. It is hypothesized that children with hearing loss benefit from the provision of these acoustic cues, provided that high-quality access is supported by their sensory system and hearing aids. The results of the proposed studies are expected to provide fundamental knowledge regarding the development of speech perception under adverse listening conditions from infancy to adulthood. Completion of the proposed experiments may also generate feasible intervention strategies that improve receptive communication outcomes for children with hearing loss.

 描述（由申请人提供）：在存在竞争声音的情况下听语音时，婴儿和儿童相对于成人处于不利地位。当竞争声音也是语音时，这些发育影响可能是惊人的，并且对于听力损失的儿童来说，这些影响比听力正常的儿童要大得多。尽管人们越来越意识到婴儿和儿童大部分时间都在多人讲话的环境中度过，但目前人们对限制儿童在竞争性言语中听力的具体因素知之甚少。此外，目前尚不清楚听力损失如何影响儿童在多人同时讲话时“听清”目标讲话者的能力。该项目的长期目标是了解在包含多个竞争声音源的复杂声学环境中听力的成熟程度。拟议的实验将隔离限制儿童将目标与竞争语音分开的能力的因素，并将评估当提供被认为促进声音分离的声学提示时，听力损失儿童的语音对语音识别的改善程度。目标 1 将评估儿童在多大程度上利用与掩蔽波动相关的改进的信噪比 (SNR) 来识别语音掩蔽中的目标语音。据推测，由于儿童的听觉体验较差，因此他们从调制中获得的好处会比成人少。目标 2 将评估听者因素（例如年龄和听力损失程度）对先天性听力损失儿童的言语掩蔽发展的相对影响。据推测，由于听力损失而导致的听觉体验的变化和/或退化会干扰感知处理能力的成熟，例如与目标与背景语音分离相关的能力。目标 3 将评估增强声音提示的实际效果，这些提示被认为有助于听力损失儿童的声音分离。据推测，听力损失儿童可以从提供这些声音提示中受益，前提是他们的感觉系统和助听器支持高质量的访问。拟议研究的结果预计将提供有关从婴儿期到成年期不利听力条件下言语感知发展的基础知识。完成所提出的实验还可能产生可行的干预策略，以改善听力损失儿童的接受性沟通结果。