Speech masking effects in speech communication across the lifespan

我们与他人成功沟通的能力会受到环境中噪音和其他声音的强烈影响，在这些情况下，儿童和老年人比年轻人受到的影响更大。对于有听力或语言障碍的人群，甚至是非母语的健康成年人来说，经历的破坏更大。一些干扰是由于干扰声音的物理掩蔽（能量掩蔽EM），但如果干扰声音可以被理解，这也会导致进一步的困难（信息掩蔽IM）。先前的研究表明，与年轻人相比，信息掩蔽对儿童和老年人造成的干扰相对更大，但这些发现是基于实验室测试，远非现实交流。尽管不利条件对语言交流的影响一直是不同年龄组的研究对象，但迄今为止还没有研究采取了全寿命的观点，使用共同的实验设计来观察IM和EM对8至85岁参与者的相对影响。此外，许多研究都集中在使用记录的句子或单词来研究EM和IM对语音感知的影响；这忽略了一个事实，即说话者在语音交流中会做出动态调整，以抵消掩蔽的影响。我们使用反映语音通信效率的措施（例如，任务交易时间，不流利率）来评估交互式任务中不利条件的影响。最后，迄今为止几乎没有证据表明基于实验室的评估是否反映了日常生活中所经历的困难程度。拟议中的项目将首次将在实验室测量的不利听力条件下的言语交流困难评估与在两周内实时收集的现实生活中的困难评级联系起来。它还将测试主要信息掩蔽是否对某些年龄组（如儿童、老年人）造成更大的干扰，以及儿童和成人之间造成干扰的潜在原因是否不同。在研究1中，120名年龄在8岁到85岁之间的人将被成对测试，同时他们在不同程度的信息和能量掩蔽条件下执行解决问题的任务。第二项任务将被添加，使任务对认知的要求更高，从而反映现实生活中的多任务处理情况。还将收集听力、言语感知和认知功能的基线测量以及听力残疾标准化问卷。在研究2中，同样的参与者将被要求在两周的时间内，每天使用基于智能手机的应用程序报告6-7次感知到的沟通困难和他们的听力环境。本研究的数据将与研究1中收集的沟通有效性和SSQ数据相关。最后，在研究3中，将收集一组4-7岁儿童的自发语音，使用相同的互动任务来补充我们之前的语料库（和研究1的数据），并获得良好听力条件下会话语音的完整生命周期声学描述符。该项目将有助于更好地了解不利听力条件的影响如何在整个生命周期中发生变化，在现实交际条件下评估不同年龄组的IM和EM的相对影响，以及基于实验室的评估的真正生态有效性。它还将为4-85岁年龄段的一组声学-语音测量提供规范性数据。这一基准将用于从业人员，如言语和语言治疗师和听力学家，他们的工作是与所有年龄段的个体沟通的各个方面。重要的是，这项研究也将有助于我们对整个生命周期的语言感知和生产发展的基本理解。

Our ability to communicate successfully with others can be strongly affected by the presence of noise and other voices in the environment, and children and older adults are more greatly affected than young adults in these situations. Even greater disruption is experienced for populations with hearing or language impairments, or even healthy adults who are non-native speakers. Some of the disruption is due to physical masking by interfering sounds (energetic masking EM) but if the disrupting sound can be understood, this also causes further difficulty (informational masking IM). Previous work suggests that informational masking causes relatively more disruption for children and older adults than for young adults but these findings are based on laboratory tests that are far from realistic communication.Although the impact of adverse conditions on speech communication has been the object of studies in different age groups, no study to date has taken a full lifespan view, looking at the relative impact of IM and EM on participants aged from 8 to 85 using a common experimental design. Also, many studies have focused on the impact of EM and IM on speech perception using recorded sentences or words; this ignores the fact that speakers make dynamic adaptations in speech communication to counter the effects of masking. We evaluate the impact of adverse conditions in an interactive task using measures reflecting speech communication efficiency (e.g., task transaction time, rate of dysfluencies). Finally, there is little evidence to date as to whether laboratory-based evaluations reflect the level of difficulty experienced in everyday life. The proposed project will, for the first time, relate evaluations of speech communication difficulties in adverse listening conditions as measured in the laboratory with real-life ratings of difficulty collected in real time over a two week period. It will also test whether primarily informational masking causes greater interference for some age groups (e.g. children, older adults), and if the underlying reasons for the interference differ between children and adults.In Study 1, 120 individuals aged 8 to 85 yrs will be tested in pairs while they carry out a problem-solving task in conditions varying in the degree of informational and energetic masking present. A secondary task will be added to make the task more cognitively demanding, thus reflecting real-life multitasking situations. Baseline measures of hearing, speech perception and cognitive function and a standardised questionnaire of auditory disability (SSQ) will also be collected. In Study 2, the same participants will be asked to report perceived communication difficulty and their listening environment on 6-7 occasions per day during a 2-week period using a smartphone-based app. Data from this study will be related to measures of communication effectiveness and SSQ data collected in Study 1. Finally, in Study 3, spontaneous speech will be collected for a group of 4-7 year olds using the same interactive task to complement measures from our previous corpora (and data for Study 1) and gain a full lifespan set of acoustic descriptors for conversational speech in good listening conditions. This project will lead to a better understanding of how the impact of adverse listening conditions changes across the lifespan, of the relative effects of IM and EM in different age groups, evaluated in realistic communicative conditions, and of the true ecological validity of laboratory-based evaluations. It will also provide normative data for a set of acoustic-phonetic measures across a 4-85 year age range. This benchmark will be of use for practitioners such as speech and language therapists and audiologists who work on aspects of communication with individuals of all ages. Importantly, this research will also contribute to our basic understanding of speech perception and production development across the lifespan.