Race, Ethnicity, and Speech Intelligibility in Normal Hearing and Hearing Impairment

项目摘要/摘要 听力障碍(HI)影响了很大一部分老年人：25%的65-74岁的人和50%的人 75岁及以上的HI严重到足以致残[36，42]。个人的主要抱怨 对于HI来说，理解语言是困难的。HI患者的言语交流不佳很可能是 他们遭受更广泛的行为和身体健康问题的原因[35，53]。了解 影响HI患者言语感知的因素及克服言语障碍的方法 这些人所面临的认知困难，具有重大的社会意义。因为改变了美国 人口统计，患有HI的老年人和年轻人之间的沟通--包括 护理和服务交付角色-越来越有可能在不同种族和 族裔[44，54]。这给HI患者带来了一个潜在的独特问题。研究表明， 当正常听力(NH)个体意识到说话者的语音变得不那么容易理解时 通过看到说话者的照片来了解说话者的种族或民族[6，37，48]。鉴于人口结构的持续变化，这些 这一发现可能会对我们理解老年人的言语感知产生深远的影响 对于HI，因为他们与年轻人的交流可能跨越种族和民族界限。这 除了感觉丧失本身带来的挑战之外，还可能对言语感知构成额外的挑战。 拟议的项目旨在消除对种族和性别影响进行大规模研究的两个障碍 种族对老年人HI言语知觉的影响。一个障碍是没有现有的视听设备 由种族和种族不同的个人产生的言语刺激语料库。在具体目标1中，我们 将建立一个新的视听言语刺激语料库，由来自不同种族和 种族。这个语料库将包括HI研究中使用的护理标准句子[26]，以及一套新的 专门为这个项目设计的句子材料。该语料库将在以下位置向公众提供 资金到位的结论。第二个障碍是之前的研究没有确定具体的 解释为什么说话者的种族和民族影响语言清晰度的机制。在具体目标2中，我们将使用 来自特定目标的刺激1对患有NH的年轻听众进行了一系列可理解性实验 有NH的听众和有HI的老年听众使用行为和眼球跟踪反应。我们还将 收集有关个人对不同种族和族裔的个人的态度的信息，以及 在他们的同龄人群体中，种族和种族多样性。这一具体目标的结果将有助于我们更好地理解 种族和民族对语言清晰度的影响的机制，以及语言是否 老年人对HI的感知在与种族和民族的互动中不成比例地较差 不同的对话者。鉴于人口结构的持续变化和听力障碍的高发生率， 这些结果将是很高的

Project Summary/Abstract Hearing impairment (HI) affects a large proportion of older adults: 25% of 65-74 year olds, and 50% of people 75 and older have a HI that is sufficiently severe to be disabling [36,42]. The primary complaint of individuals with HI is difficulty understanding speech. Suboptimal speech communication by people with HI is a likely reason why they suffer from broader behavioral and physical health problems [35,53]. Understanding the factors that affect speech perception by people with HI, and finding methods to overcome the speech perception difficulties that these individuals face, is of great societal importance. Because of changing US demographics, communication between older individuals with HI and younger individuals—including those in caregiving and service-delivery roles—is increasingly likely to be between individuals of different races and ethnicities [44,54]. This presents a potential unique problem to individuals with HI. Research has shown that a talker's speech can become less intelligible to normal hearing (NH) individuals when they become aware of a talker's race or ethnicity by seeing a picture of the talker [6,37,48]. Given ongoing demographic changes, these findings have potentially profound implications for our understanding of speech perception by older adults with HI, as their communication with younger individuals is likely to be across lines of race and ethnicity. This may provide an additional challenge to speech perception beyond the challenge posed by the sensory loss itself. The proposed project seeks to remove two barriers to conducting large-scale studies of effects of race and ethnicity on speech perception by older adults with HI. One barrier is that there are no existing audiovisual corpora of speech stimuli that are produced by ethnically and racially diverse individuals. In specific aim 1, we will build a new corpus of audiovisual speech stimuli produced by individuals from diverse races and ethnicities. This corpus will include both standard-of-care sentences used in research on HI [26], and a new set of sentence materials designed specifically for this project. This corpus will be made available to the public at the conclusion of funding. The second barrier is that the previous studies have not determined the specific mechanism that explains why talker race and ethnicity affect speech intelligibility. In specific aim 2, we will use stimuli from specific aim 1 in a series of intelligibility experiments with younger listeners with NH, older listeners with NH, and older listeners with HI, using both behavioral and eye-tracking responses. We will also collect information on individuals' attitudes toward individuals of different races and ethnicities, as well as the ethnic and racial diversity in their peer groups. Results from this specific aim will help us better understand the mechanisms that underlie effects of race and ethnicity on speech intelligibility, and whether the speech perception of older adults with HI is disproportionately poorer in interactions with racially and ethnically diverse interlocutors. Given ongoing demographic changes and the high incidence of hearing impairment, these results will be of high