SUSCEPTIBILITY TO AND RELEASE FROM MASKING IN INFANCY AND CHILDHOOD

 描述（由申请人提供）：婴儿和儿童在竞争性声音存在下听语音时相对于成人处于不利地位。当竞争的声音也是语音时，这些发展影响可能是惊人的，并且对于听力损失的儿童比听力正常的儿童要大得多。尽管越来越多的人意识到婴儿和儿童大部分时间都在多人说话的环境中度过，但目前对限制儿童在竞争性言语中听力的具体因素知之甚少。此外，目前还不清楚听力损失如何影响儿童在多人同时说话时“听清”目标说话者的能力。该项目的长期目标是了解在包含多个竞争声音源的复杂声学环境中听觉的成熟。拟议的实验将隔离的因素，限制儿童的能力，以区分目标从竞争的语音，并将评估在何种程度上语音识别改善听力损失的儿童时，声学线索认为，以促进声音隔离提供。目标1将评估儿童在多大程度上利用改善的信号噪声比（SNR），与掩蔽物波动的一瞥，识别目标语音在语音掩蔽。据推测，由于儿童的听觉体验较差，他们从调制中受益的程度低于成人。目标2将评估听者因素（如年龄和听力损失程度）对先天性听力损失儿童言语间掩蔽发展的相对影响。据推测，可变和/或退化的听觉体验，作为听力损失的结果干扰知觉处理能力的成熟，如那些与目标从背景语音的分离。目标3将评估增强声音线索的实际后果，这些线索被认为有助于听力损失儿童的声音分离。据推测，听力损失儿童受益于提供这些声学线索，提供高质量的访问是由他们的感觉系统和助听器的支持。建议的研究结果，预计将提供有关从婴儿期到成年期不利的听力条件下的言语知觉的发展的基础知识。完成拟议的实验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.