TY - JOUR
T1 - Forward and backward masking of consonants in school-age children and adults
AU - Porter, Heather L.
AU - Spitzer, Emily R.
AU - Buss, Emily
AU - Leibold, Lori J.
AU - Grose, John H.
N1 - Funding Information:
The work was supported by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (R01 DC011038, granted to Lori J. Leibold, and F32 DC014209, granted to Heather L. Porter). The authors are grateful to Margaret Miller, Heidi Lang, and the members of the Psychoacoustics Laboratories and the Human Auditory Development Lab at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for their assistance with data processing.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
PY - 2018/7
Y1 - 2018/7
N2 - Purpose: This experiment sought to determine whether children’s increased susceptibility to nonsimultaneous masking, particularly backward masking, is evident for speech stimuli. Method: Five-to 9-year-olds and adults with normal hearing heard nonsense consonant–vowel–consonant targets. In Experiments 1 and 2, those targets were presented between two 250-ms segments of 70-dB-SPL speech-shaped noise, at either −30 dB signal-to-noise ratio (Experiment 1) or at the listener’s word recognition threshold (Experiment 2). In Experiment 3, the target was presented in steady speech-shaped noise at listener threshold. For all experiments, percent correct was estimated for initial and final consonants. Results: In the nonsimultaneous noise conditions, child– adult differences were larger for the final consonant than the initial consonant whether listeners were tested at −30 dB signal-to-noise ratio (Experiment 1) or at their individual word recognition threshold (Experiment 2). Children were not particularly susceptible to backward masking relative to adults when tested in a steady masker (Experiment 3). Conclusions: Child–adult differences were greater for backward than forward masking for speech in a nonsimultaneous noise masker, as observed in previous psychophysical studies using tonal stimuli. Children’s greater susceptibility to nonsimultaneous masking, and backward masking in particular, could play a role in their limited ability to benefit from masker envelope modulation when recognizing masked speech.
AB - Purpose: This experiment sought to determine whether children’s increased susceptibility to nonsimultaneous masking, particularly backward masking, is evident for speech stimuli. Method: Five-to 9-year-olds and adults with normal hearing heard nonsense consonant–vowel–consonant targets. In Experiments 1 and 2, those targets were presented between two 250-ms segments of 70-dB-SPL speech-shaped noise, at either −30 dB signal-to-noise ratio (Experiment 1) or at the listener’s word recognition threshold (Experiment 2). In Experiment 3, the target was presented in steady speech-shaped noise at listener threshold. For all experiments, percent correct was estimated for initial and final consonants. Results: In the nonsimultaneous noise conditions, child– adult differences were larger for the final consonant than the initial consonant whether listeners were tested at −30 dB signal-to-noise ratio (Experiment 1) or at their individual word recognition threshold (Experiment 2). Children were not particularly susceptible to backward masking relative to adults when tested in a steady masker (Experiment 3). Conclusions: Child–adult differences were greater for backward than forward masking for speech in a nonsimultaneous noise masker, as observed in previous psychophysical studies using tonal stimuli. Children’s greater susceptibility to nonsimultaneous masking, and backward masking in particular, could play a role in their limited ability to benefit from masker envelope modulation when recognizing masked speech.
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U2 - 10.1044/2018_JSLHR-H-17-0403
DO - 10.1044/2018_JSLHR-H-17-0403
M3 - Article
C2 - 29971342
AN - SCOPUS:85050146411
VL - 61
SP - 1807
EP - 1814
JO - Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders
JF - Journal of Speech and Hearing Disorders
SN - 1092-4388
IS - 7
ER -