Age-Related Differences in Lexical Access Relate to Speech Recognition in Noise
Age-Related Differences in Lexical Access Relate to Speech Recognition in Noise
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DOI：
10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00990
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发表时间：
2016-07-04
影响因子：
3.8
通讯作者：
Ruigendijk, Esther
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Carroll, Rebecca;Warzybok, Anna;Ruigendijk, Esther
词汇量被认为是衡量“语言能力”的一个有用的指标，它与语音识别分数相关。了解更多的单词与更好的语音识别有关。词汇知识如何转化为一般的语音识别机制，这些机制如何与离线语音识别分数相关，以及它们如何被声学失真或年龄调制，还不太清楚。语言测量中的年龄相关差异可以预测噪声性能中语音识别的年龄相关差异。我们假设语音识别性能可以通过词汇访问的效率来预测，词汇访问的效率是指相对于心理词典的大小，可以搜索和访问给定单词的速度。我们在两个信噪比（SNR）的临床德语噪声中的语音识别测试，在22个年轻人（18-35岁）和22个老年人（60-78岁）听力正常的听众。我们还评估了接受性词汇，词汇通达时间，言语工作记忆，听力阈值作为个体差异的措施。年龄、信噪比、词汇量和词汇通达时间是个体语音识别成绩的显著预测因子，而工作记忆和听阈则不是。有趣的是，更长的访问时间与更好的语音识别分数相关。每个年龄组和SNR子集的分层回归模型显示出非常相似的模式：词汇量和词汇访问时间的组合对语音识别性能的贡献最大;只有在更好的SNR（产生约85%的正确语音识别）的年轻组中，词汇量单独预测性能。我们的数据表明，成功的语音识别噪声主要是调制的词汇访问的效率。这表明，老年人在语音识别任务中的表现较差，可能是由于词汇通达效率降低;平均词汇量与年轻人相似，他们在词汇通达方面仍然较慢。
Vocabulary size has been suggested as a useful measure of "verbal abilities" that correlates with speech recognition scores. Knowing more words is linked to better speech recognition. How vocabulary knowledge translates to general speech recognition mechanisms, how these mechanisms relate to offline speech recognition scores, and how they may be modulated by acoustical distortion or age, is less clear. Age-related differences in linguistic measures may predict age-related differences in speech recognition in noise performance. We hypothesized that speech recognition performance can be predicted by the efficiency of lexical access, which refers to the speed with which a given word can be searched and accessed relative to the size of the mental lexicon. We tested speech recognition in a clinical German sentence-in-noise test at two signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs), in 22 younger (18-35 years) and 22 older (60-78 years) listeners with normal hearing. We also assessed receptive vocabulary, lexical access time, verbal working memory, and hearing thresholds as measures of individual differences. Age group, SNR level, vocabulary size, and lexical access time were significant predictors of individual speech recognition scores, but working memory and hearing threshold were not. Interestingly, longer accessing times were correlated with better speech recognition scores. Hierarchical regression models for each subset of age group and SNR showed very similar patterns: the combination of vocabulary size and lexical access time contributed most to speech recognition performance; only for the younger group at the better SNR (yielding about 85% correct speech recognition) did vocabulary size alone predict performance. Our data suggest that successful speech recognition in noise is mainly modulated by the efficiency of lexical access. This suggests that older adults' poorer performance in the speech recognition task may have arisen from reduced efficiency in lexical access; with an average vocabulary size similar to that of younger adults, they were still slower in lexical access.