Speech Perception Training: Advanced Scoring and Feedback Methods

老年人在嘈杂的环境中通常会遇到听力困难，无论他们的听力阈值是否 增加了。能够看到说话的人可以显著改善他们的听力困难， 但这种好处的大小在很大程度上取决于每个人的唇读能力。不幸的是， 大多数老年人在他们的大部分生活中都有正常的听力，但他们的唇读能力很差。相- 在SBIR的资助下，SeeHear LLC实现了一个基于网络的语音识别训练系统，以改善唇读。 训练系统实现了独特的高偶然性反馈以下开放集识别反应 用孤立的句子进行训练。高偶然性的反馈使受训者了解这种关系 在他们的知觉错误和刺激之间的单词或音素的水平，知觉学习的关键。 用于使用连接的语音刺激进行训练的典型软件提供低偶然性反馈： 并没有建立刺激和受训者感知反应错误之间的关系。高- 偶然性反馈提高了唇读的准确性和语音识别与视听刺激的噪音， 听力正常（NH）的成年人。这种训练方法将对老年听力受损者进行评估 参与者，它将扩展到唇读培训以外的视听语音识别培训， 嘈杂的背景。第二个，高度新颖，但潜在的有效和高效的培训模式也将是 评估。第二种方法使用配对的联想学习任务，在该任务中，受训者学习联想 说些无意义的话配上无意义的图片这项任务旨在鼓励学员密切关注 在尝试学习单词与图片的联系时，实验室检测， 年轻的NH成年人表明，唇读训练与这种模式可以提供显着的概括， 用新的刺激和新的说话者来唇读。这一范例将在老年人中进行测试， 提供噪音方面的视听培训。 拟议的项目包括随机对照试验临床试验和额外的培训系统 发展将有一个等待列表对照组，用于与分配给训练句子的组进行比较 刺激和高或低偶然性反馈，用于开放式句子唇读或视听识别。两 另外的小组将在配对的联想范式中进行训练：一组将通过唇读进行训练， 刺激，另一组将在语音形状的噪声中进行视听刺激训练。所有 研究参与者将接受实验室训练前和训练后的测试，旨在确定 训练期间的学习是否推广到不同的言语感知任务，不同的刺激， 和不同的谈话者在不同的模态（唇读，仅语音，和视听语音与声学 噪声中的信号）。为了进行所有的训练研究和数据恢复，提出了基于web的 系统将扩大。成功完成第二阶段项目将直接支持商业化 的训练系统。

Older adults commonly experience hearing difficulties in noisy settings, whether or not their hearing thresholds have increased. Being able to see the person who is talking can significantly ameliorate their hearing difficulties, but the magnitude of the benefit depends greatly on each person’s lipreading ability. Unfortunately, the vast majority of older adults who have had normal hearing during most of their lives are poor lipreaders. With Phase- I SBIR funding, SeeHear LLC realized a web-based speech recognition training system to improve lipreading. The training system implements unique high-contingency feedback following open set recognition responses during training with isolated sentences. High-contingency feedback informs the trainee about the relationship between their perceptual errors and the stimulus at the level of words or phonemes, a key to perceptual learning. Typical software for training with connected speech stimuli provides low-contingency feedback: The feedback does not establish a relationship between the stimulus and the trainee’s perceptual response errors. High- contingency feedback increases lipreading accuracy and speech recognition with audiovisual stimuli in noise in younger normal-hearing (NH) adults. This training approach will be evaluated with older hearing-impaired participants, and it will be extended beyond lipreading training to audiovisual speech recognition training in a noisy background. A second, highly novel, but potentially effective and efficient training paradigm will also be evaluated. This second approach uses a paired associates learning task, in which trainees learn to associate spoken nonsense words with nonsense pictures. The task is designed to encourage trainees to attend closely to the spoken nonsense words while trying to learn the word-to-picture associations. Laboratory testing with younger NH adults shows that lipreading training with this paradigm can deliver significant generalization to lipreading with new stimuli and a new talker. This paradigm will be tested with older adults and will be extended to offer audiovisual training in noise. The proposed project comprises randomized controlled-trial clinical tests and additional training system development. There will be a wait-list control group for comparison to groups assigned to train with sentence stimuli and high- or low-contingency feedback for open set sentence lipreading or audiovisual recognition. Two additional groups will train in the paired associates paradigm: One group will carry out training by lipreading the stimuli, and the other group will carry out training with audiovisual stimuli in speech-shaped noise. All of the participants in the research will undergo laboratory pre- and post-training tests that are designed to determine whether learning during the training sessions generalizes to different speech perception tasks, different stimuli, and different talkers across different modalities (lipreading, auditory-only, and audiovisual speech with acoustic signals in noise). In order to carry out all of the proposed training research and data recovery, the web-based system will be expanded. Successful completion of this Phase-II project will directly support commercialization of the training system.