Children's perception of speech produced in a two-talker background

Purpose: This study evaluated the degree to which children benefit from the acoustic modifications made by talkers when they produce speech in noise. Method: A repeated measures design compared the speech perception performance of children (5-11 years) and adults in a 2-talker masker. Target speech was produced in a 2-talker background or in quiet. In Experiment 1, recognition with the 2 target sets was assessed using an adaptive spondee identification procedure. In Experiment 2, the benefit of speech produced in a 2-talker background was assessed using an open-set, monosyllabic word recognition task at a fixed signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Results: Children performed more poorly than adults, regardless of whether the target speech was produced in quiet or in a 2-talker background. A small improvement in the SNR required to identify spondees was observed for both children and adults using speech produced in a 2-talker background (Experiment 1). Similarly, average open-set word recognition scores were 11 percentage points higher for both age groups using speech produced in a 2-talker background compared with quiet (Experiment 2). Conclusion: The results indicate that children can use the acoustic modifications of speech produced in a 2-talker background to improve masked speech perception, as previously demonstrated for adults.