SUSCEPTIBILITY TO AND RELEASE FROM MASKING IN INFANCY AND CHILDHOOD

 描述(申请人提供)：婴儿和儿童在听到相互竞争的声音时，与成年人相比处于劣势。当相互竞争的声音也是语音时，这些发育影响可能是惊人的，而且对于听力受损的儿童来说，比听力正常的儿童要大得多。尽管人们越来越意识到，婴儿和儿童一天中的大部分时间都是在多人交谈的环境中度过的，但目前对限制儿童在竞争语言中听力的具体因素知之甚少。此外，当多个人同时说话时，听力损失如何影响儿童“倾听”目标说话者的能力还不清楚。这个项目的长期目标是了解在包含多个竞争声音来源的复杂声学环境中听力的成熟。拟议中的实验将隔离限制儿童将目标语音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线索时，对听力损失儿童的语音对语音识别的改善程度。目标1将评估儿童利用与掩蔽物波动相关的信噪比(SNR)改善的机会来识别言语掩蔽物中的目标语音的程度。据推测，由于儿童的听觉体验减少，他们从调制中受益的程度将低于成年人。目的2评估年龄、听力损失程度等听者因素对先天性耳聋儿童言语掩蔽发展的相对影响。假设由于听力损失而引起的变化和/或退化的听觉体验干扰了感知处理能力的成熟，例如与目标和背景语音分离相关的能力。目标3将评估增强声学提示的实际结果，这些提示被认为有助于听力损失儿童的声音分离。假设听力损失的儿童从提供这些声学提示中受益，前提是他们的感觉系统和助听器支持高质量的访问。这项研究的结果有望为从婴儿期到成年期在不利的听力条件下言语知觉的发展提供基础知识。拟议实验的完成也可能产生可行的干预策略，改善听力损失儿童的接受性沟通结果。

 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.