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

项目总结/摘要 听力障碍（HI）影响了很大一部分老年人：65 - 74岁的25%， 75岁及以上的患者HI严重到足以致残[36，42]。个人的主要抱怨 有HI的人很难理解言语。HI患者的次优言语交流可能是 为什么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，并找到克服言语的方法， 这些人所面临的认知困难具有重大的社会意义。因为改变了我们 人口统计学，HI老年人和年轻人之间的沟通，包括那些在 服务和提供服务的角色越来越有可能在不同种族的个人之间发生， 种族[44，54]。这给HI患者带来了一个潜在的独特问题。研究表明，A 当正常听力（NH）个体意识到说话者的语音时，他们的语音可能变得不太容易理解。 说话者的种族或民族通过看到说话者的图片[6，37，48]。鉴于目前的人口变化， 这些发现对于我们理解老年人的言语感知具有潜在的深远意义 他们与年轻人的交流很可能跨越种族和民族的界限。这 可能会给言语感知带来额外的挑战，而不是感官丧失本身带来的挑战。 拟议的项目旨在消除两个障碍，进行大规模的研究，种族和 种族对HI老年人言语感知的影响。一个障碍是，没有现有的视听 由不同民族和种族的个体产生的语音刺激语料库。在具体目标1中，我们 将建立一个新的视听语音刺激语料库，由来自不同种族的个人产生， 种族该语料库将包括HI研究中使用的标准护理句子[26]和一组新的 专门为这个项目设计的句子材料。该语料库将在 资金的终结。第二个障碍是之前的研究还没有确定具体的 这一机制解释了为什么说话者的种族和民族会影响语音清晰度。在具体目标2中，我们将使用 来自特定目标1的刺激在一系列可懂度实验中， NH的听众和HI的老年听众，使用行为和眼动跟踪反应。我们还将 收集个人对不同种族和民族的个人的态度，以及 种族和民族多样性。这一具体目标的结果将有助于我们更好地了解 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相互作用中不成比例地较差， 不同的对话者。鉴于人口结构的不断变化和听力障碍的高发率， 这些结果将是高

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