Ear and Hearing最新文献

{"title":"Taking the Extra Listening Mile: Processing Spoken Semantic Context Is More Effortful for Older Than Young Adults.","authors":"Tami Harel-Arbeli, Hagit Shaposhnik, Yuval Palgi, Boaz M Ben-David","doi":"10.1097/AUD.0000000000001582","DOIUrl":"10.1097/AUD.0000000000001582","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Objectives: </strong>Older adults use semantic context to generate predictions in speech processing, compensating for aging-related sensory and cognitive changes. This study aimed to gauge aging-related changes in effort exertion related to context use.</p><p><strong>Design: </strong>The study revisited data from Harel-Arbeli et al. (2023) that used a \"visual-world\" eye-tracking paradigm. Data on efficiency of context use (response latency and the probability to gaze at the target before hearing it) and effort exertion (pupil dilation) were extracted from a subset of 14 young adults (21 to 27 years old) and 13 older adults (65 to 79 years old).</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Both age groups showed a similar pattern of context benefits for response latency and target word predictions, however only the older adults group showed overall increased pupil dilation when listening to context sentences.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Older adults' efficient use of spoken semantic context appears to come at a cost of increased effort exertion.</p>","PeriodicalId":55172,"journal":{"name":"Ear and Hearing","volume":" ","pages":"315-324"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142114960","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Changes in Auditory Performance Following a Virtual Reality Music Concert.","authors":"Sarah K Grinn, Dana E Notaro, Jatinder K Shokar, Chin-I Cheng","doi":"10.1097/AUD.0000000000001587","DOIUrl":"10.1097/AUD.0000000000001587","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Objectives: </strong>The purpose of this study was to evaluate threshold and suprathreshold auditory risk from a newly popular platform of music concert entertainment; virtual reality (VR) headsets. Recreational noise exposure to music is the primary source of hearing hazard in young-adults, with noise doses of in-person concert venues and music festivals well in excess of the recommended daily exposure recommendation from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. While research on the relationship between personal music players and noise-induced hearing loss risk is abundant, no study has yet evaluated noise-induced hearing loss risk from VR headsets, which are newest to the commercial market at this time.</p><p><strong>Design: </strong>Thirty-one young-adult participants (18 to 25 years) with normal-hearing sensitivity (0 to 16 dB HL) experienced a VR music concert and participated in three data collection timepoints: Session A preexposure, Session A post-exposure, and Session B post-exposure. Participants underwent baseline testing for audiometry (0.25 to 20 kHz), distortion product otoacoustic emission testing (1 to 10 kHz), and Words-in-Noise testing. Participants then wore a commercially available VR headset (Meta Quest 2) and experienced a freely available online VR music concert (via the video-sharing website \"YouTube\"). The VR music concert duration was 90 min set to maximum volume, which yielded an average sound level equivalent of 78.7 dBA, max sound level of 88.2 dBA, and LC peak sound level of 98.6 dBA. Post-exposure testing was conducted immediately at the conclusion of the VR concert, and again within 24 hr to 1 week after the exposure. Participants also answered a questionnaire that estimated noise exposure history (National Acoustics Laboratory \"Noise Calculator\").</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Post-exposure deficit was not observed in DPOAEs or Words-in-Noise score ( p' s > 0.05). However, statistically significant temporary post-exposure deficit was observed in audiometry at 4, 8, and 12.5 kHz ( p 's < 0.05) (mean differences: 2 to 3 dB HL). Twenty-four hours and 1-week post-exposure measurements revealed no permanent changes from baseline measurements ( p 's > 0.05) aside from one spurious difference at 12.5 kHz. Males tended to exhibit a significantly higher noise history score on average than females. The primary, secondary, and tertiary sources of noise hazard history in this young-adult cohort included amplified music.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>These preliminary data suggest that VR music concerts-which are likely to produce a substantially lower noise dose than in-person music concerts-may still be capable of producing at least slight, temporary threshold shifts on the order of 2 to 3 dB HL. Future research should include VR headsets in personal music player risk assessment, as the VR music concert platform is increasing rapidly in popularity among young-adults.</p>","PeriodicalId":55172,"journal":{"name":"Ear and Hearing","volume":" ","pages":"382-392"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11825494/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142481384","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Sounds of Nature and Hearing Loss: A Call to Action.","authors":"Dina Lelic, Erin Picou, Valeriy Shafiro, Christian Lorenzi","doi":"10.1097/AUD.0000000000001601","DOIUrl":"10.1097/AUD.0000000000001601","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The ability to monitor surrounding natural sounds and scenes is important for performing many activities in daily life and for overall well-being. Yet, unlike speech, perception of natural sounds and scenes is relatively understudied in relation to hearing loss, despite the documented restorative health effects. We present data from first-time hearing aid users describing \"rediscovered\" natural sounds they could now perceive with clarity. These data suggest that hearing loss not only diminishes recognition of natural sounds, but also limits people's awareness of the richness of their environment, thus limiting their connection to it. Little is presently known about the extent hearing aids can restore the perception of abundance, clarity, or intensity of natural sounds. Our call to action outlines specific steps to improve the experience of natural sounds and scenes for people with hearing loss-an overlooked aspect of their quality of life.</p>","PeriodicalId":55172,"journal":{"name":"Ear and Hearing","volume":" ","pages":"298-304"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11825482/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142592402","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Age-Related Listening Performance Changes Across Adulthood.","authors":"Pamela P Lunardelo, Marisa T H Fukuda, Sthella Zanchetta","doi":"10.1097/AUD.0000000000001595","DOIUrl":"10.1097/AUD.0000000000001595","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Objectives: </strong>This study compares auditory processing performance across different decades of adulthood, including young adults and middle-aged individuals with normal hearing and no spontaneous auditory complaints.</p><p><strong>Design: </strong>We assessed 80 participants with normal hearing, at least 10 years of education, and normal global cognition. The participants completed various auditory tests, including speech-in-noise, dichotic digits, duration, pitch pattern sequence, gap in noise, and masking level difference. In addition, we conducted working memory assessments and administered a questionnaire on self-perceived hearing difficulties.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Our findings revealed significant differences in auditory test performance across different age groups, except for the masking level difference. The youngest group outperformed all other age groups in the speech-in-noise test, while differences in dichotic listening and temporal resolution emerged from the age of 40 and in temporal ordering from the age of 50. Moreover, higher education levels and better working memory test scores were associated with better auditory performance as individuals aged. However, the influence of these factors varied across different auditory tests. It is interesting that we observed increased self-reported hearing difficulties with age, even in participants without spontaneous auditory complaints.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Our study highlights significant variations in auditory test performance, with noticeable changes occurring from age 30 and becoming more pronounced from age 40 onward. As individuals grow older, they tend to perceive more hearing difficulties. Furthermore, the impact of age on auditory processing performance is influenced by factors such as education and working memory.</p>","PeriodicalId":55172,"journal":{"name":"Ear and Hearing","volume":" ","pages":"408-420"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142382531","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Relationship Between Working Memory, Compression, and Beamformers in Ideal Conditions.","authors":"Varsha Rallapalli, Richard Freyman, Pamela Souza","doi":"10.1097/AUD.0000000000001605","DOIUrl":"10.1097/AUD.0000000000001605","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Objectives: &lt;/strong&gt;Previous research has shown that speech recognition with different wide dynamic range compression (WDRC) time-constants (fast-acting or Fast and slow-acting or Slow) is associated with individual working memory ability, especially in adverse listening conditions. Until recently, much of this research has been limited to omnidirectional hearing aid settings and colocated speech and noise, whereas most hearing aids are fit with directional processing that may improve the listening environment in spatially separated conditions and interact with WDRC processing. The primary objective of this study was to determine whether there is an association between individual working memory ability and speech recognition in noise with different WDRC time-constants, with and without microphone directionality (binaural beamformer or Beam versus omnidirectional or Omni) in a spatial condition ideal for the beamformer (speech at 0 , noise at 180 ). The hypothesis was that the relationship between speech recognition ability and different WDRC time-constants would depend on working memory in the Omni mode, whereas the relationship would diminish in the Beam mode. The study also examined whether this relationship is different from the effects of working memory on speech recognition with WDRC time-constants previously studied in colocated conditions.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Design: &lt;/strong&gt;Twenty-one listeners with bilateral mild to moderately severe sensorineural hearing loss repeated low-context sentences mixed with four-talker babble, presented across 0 to 10 dB signal to noise ratio (SNR) in colocated (0 ) and spatially separated (180 ) conditions. A wearable hearing aid customized to the listener's hearing level was used to present four signal processing combinations which combined microphone mode (Beam or Omni) and WDRC time-constants (Fast or Slow). Individual working memory ability was measured using the reading span test. A signal distortion metric was used to quantify cumulative temporal envelope distortion from background noise and the hearing aid processing for each listener. In a secondary analysis, the role of working memory in the relationship between cumulative signal distortion and speech recognition was examined in the spatially separated condition.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Results: &lt;/strong&gt;Signal distortion was greater with Fast WDRC compared with Slow WDRC, regardless of the microphone mode or spatial condition. As expected, Beam reduced signal distortion and improved speech recognition over Omni, especially at poorer SNRs. Contrary to the hypothesis, speech recognition with different WDRC time-constants did not depend on working memory in Beam or Omni (in the spatially separated condition). However, there was a significant interaction between working memory and cumulative signal distortion, such that speech recognition increased at a faster rate with lower distortion for an individual with better working memory. In Omni, the effect of w","PeriodicalId":55172,"journal":{"name":"Ear and Hearing","volume":" ","pages":"523-536"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142774943","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Associations Between Noise Exposure Level, Noise Kurtosis, and Distortion Product Otoacoustic Emissions in Young Workers With Normal Hearing.","authors":"Fang Wei, Wulan Zhao, Xiangjing Gao, Panqi Xue, Fei Xu, Hongwei Xie, Ning Yang, Hua Zou, Wei Qiu","doi":"10.1097/AUD.0000000000001600","DOIUrl":"10.1097/AUD.0000000000001600","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Objectives: </strong>Growing evidence has suggested that, in addition to noise exposure level, noise temporal structure (i.e., kurtosis) plays an important role in the development of noise-induced hearing loss, while most of the relevant research has been on the results of pure-tone audiometry. This study focuses on the combined effect of noise exposure level and noise kurtosis on distortion product otoacoustic emissions (DPOAEs) in young workers with normal hearing.</p><p><strong>Design: </strong>A cross-sectional study among young workers in manufacturing industries was conducted in Zhejiang Province, China. Individual noise exposure measurements were performed on participants to obtain an A-weighted noise exposure level normalized to 8 hr ( LAeq, 8hr ), cumulative noise exposure (CNE), kurtosis, and kurtosis-adjusted CNE (CNE-K). The DPOAE test was performed on the participants and DPOAE levels were obtained. The relationships between noise exposure level, kurtosis, and DPOAE levels were explored by univariate analyses. Furthermore, multivariate regression models were conducted to estimate the combined effects of exposure level and kurtosis after adjusting for age, gender, and use of hearing protection devices.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>The overall DPOAE curves across frequency bands presented a fluctuating downward trend with increasing frequency. Both exposure level and kurtosis were found to be associated with decreases in DPOAE levels. The multivariate regression model including CNE-K as a joint indicator of complex noise showed an increased R2 compared with the model including CNE. After adjustment for age, gender, and the use of hearing protection devices, significant effects of CNE-K on DPOAE levels were observed at 3, 4, and 5 kHz frequencies, with maximum effect presented at 4 kHz.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>DPOAE is a sensitive test that can detect cochlear damage in limited areas that cannot be detected by conventional audiometry. The present study provided a more comprehensive understanding of the impact of complex noise on the DPOAE levels. It also suggested that CNE-K was an effective metric in assessing DPOAE levels associated with complex noise.</p>","PeriodicalId":55172,"journal":{"name":"Ear and Hearing","volume":" ","pages":"483-493"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11825503/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142481383","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Hearing Screening in Older Adults in Primary Care Clinics: How the Effects of Setting and Provider Encouragement Differ by Patient Sex and Race.","authors":"Jessica S West, Judy R Dubno, Howard W Francis, Sherri L Smith","doi":"10.1097/AUD.0000000000001604","DOIUrl":"10.1097/AUD.0000000000001604","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Objectives: </strong>Few studies have examined how patient sex or race influence hearing healthcare, which was our study purpose.</p><p><strong>Design: </strong>We performed a secondary analysis using data from a pragmatic clinical trial that examined the effect of provider encouragement (yes/no) or setting (at-home/clinic) for older adults to follow through with routine hearing screening in primary care and the hearing healthcare pathway. Three protocols were compared: at-home screening without provider encouragement, at-home screening with provider encouragement, and in-clinic screening with provider encouragement.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Poisson regression (n = 627) showed few differences by patient sex but showed that Black patients in the at-home protocols were less likely to schedule or complete a formal diagnostic evaluation after a failed screening compared with Black patients in the clinic setting and White patients in all groups. Black patients, regardless of provider encouragement, were less likely to schedule or complete a diagnostic evaluation compared with White patients.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>Results suggest that in-clinic screenings may increase the use of hearing healthcare for Black patients.</p>","PeriodicalId":55172,"journal":{"name":"Ear and Hearing","volume":" ","pages":"512-522"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11833793/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142549037","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Remote Microphone Systems for Autistic and Nonautistic Youth: Effects on Audiovisual Task Engagement.","authors":"Kacie Dunham-Carr, Nisha Mailapur, Bahar Keçeli-Kaysili, Jacob I Feldman, Emily Thompson, Hilary Davis, Anne Marie Tharpe, Erin Picou, Tiffany G Woynaroski","doi":"10.1097/AUD.0000000000001581","DOIUrl":"10.1097/AUD.0000000000001581","url":null,"abstract":"&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Objectives: &lt;/strong&gt;A recent study has provided empirical support for the use of remote microphone (RM) systems to improve listening-in-noise performance of autistic youth. It has been proposed that RM system effects might be achieved by boosting engagement in this population. The present study used behavioral coding to test this hypothesis in autistic and nonautistic youth listening in an ecologically valid, noisy environment.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Design: &lt;/strong&gt;We drew on extant data from a recent experimental study in which 56 youth (32 autistic, 24 nonautistic) matched at the group level on age and biological sex completed listening-in-noise tasks wherein they reported their perception of audiovisual syllables, words, sentences, and passages with and without an RM system; conditions were counter-balanced across participants. As previously reported, perceptual accuracy varied with stimulus complexity and overall improved with the RM system, with improvements not significantly different between groups. Video recordings of participants completing listening-in-noise tasks in both conditions were coded via a 5-second, partial-interval coding system by naive coders for (a) engagement in the task (indexed via proportion of intervals in which participants displayed on-task behaviors) and (b) verbal, stimulus-specific protesting in the task (indexed via proportion of intervals in which participants displayed verbal, stimulus-specific protesting behaviors). Examples of on-task behaviors included attending to the screen and completing task activities. Examples of protesting behaviors included complaining about stimuli volume or the inability to hear. Chronological age, autism features, language ability, audiovisual speech integration as measured by psychophysical tasks, tactile responsiveness, and nonverbal intelligence quotient were evaluated as putative predictors and/or moderators of effects on behaviors of interest.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Results: &lt;/strong&gt;In general, participants were highly engaged in the task, and there were few protests, reflecting more than 90% and fewer than 0.5% of coded intervals, respectively. We did not detect any statistically significant effects of group or RM system use on task engagement. Nonautistic youth were engaged in the listening-in-noise task for an average of 97.45% of intervals, whereas autistic youth were engaged in the listening-in-noise task for an average of 94.25% of intervals. In contrast, verbal, stimulus-specific protesting in the listening-in-noise task was significantly reduced, on average, in the RM (0.04% of intervals) versus the No RM (0.2% of intervals) conditions. There were no effects related to group for this behaviorally coded outcome. In addition, select participant characteristics predicted engagement within conditions across participants. Greater language ability and nonverbal intelligence quotient predicted increased engagement when not using an RM system. Increased features of autism and w","PeriodicalId":55172,"journal":{"name":"Ear and Hearing","volume":" ","pages":"325-335"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11832330/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142301425","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Incorporating Virtual Reality Agents During a Dichotic Speech Reception Task: Insights From the Heart.","authors":"Bethany Plain, Hidde Pielage, Adriana A Zekveld, Michael Richter, Tanveer A Bhuiyan, Sjors R B van de Ven, Sophia E Kramer","doi":"10.1097/AUD.0000000000001597","DOIUrl":"10.1097/AUD.0000000000001597","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Objectives: </strong>Listening effort is moderated by not only task difficulty, but also success importance. In real communication scenarios, success importance varies based upon the social context. However, in the laboratory, it can be challenging to manipulate social context without compromising experimental control. Outside of hearing sciences, studies have applied virtual reality (VR) to incorporate social context in a controlled and repeatable manner. Several of these studies have demonstrated that social manipulations in VR can reliably elicit changes in cardiovascular measures. Here, we investigated the effect of adding VR agents to a speech reception task, while measuring from the cardiovascular system.</p><p><strong>Design: </strong>Twenty-eight, normally hearing participants undertook a dichotic speech reception task. Sentences in stationary noise were presented dichotically, that is, different sentences presented simultaneously to each ear. Participants were tasked to either repeat one of the sentences (single-sentence condition) or both of the sentences (dual-sentence condition). The task was conducted under two VR conditions: (1) in the presence of agents, who provided sporadic performance feedback and (2) in the presence of nonagent controls, without any feedback given. Alongside task performance, we quantified changes in cardiovascular measures, relative to pretask baselines: heart rate variability, pre-ejection period, heart rate, and blood pressure. After each condition, participants rated their subjective effort, difficulty, performance, and engagement.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Performance and the subjective perception of performance were lower, while subjective effort and difficulty were higher, in the dual-sentence condition, compared with the single-sentence condition. Heart rate was the only cardiovascular measure that was sensitive to the experimental manipulations. Contrary to our expectations, heart rate increased in the nonagent control conditions, compared with the agent conditions. An exploratory analysis revealed heart rate fluctuations within a trial: heart rate was higher during the first 6 sec of the trial (reflecting the presentence masking noise and the sentence presentation) in the dual-sentence condition, compared with the single-sentence condition.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong>This study was the first to incorporate VR agents who provided performance feedback during a dichotic speech reception task. Our results suggest that the VR agents did not increase success importance, which could be attributed to a lack of realism of the agents. We also demonstrated that the cardiovascular response to experimental manipulations may differ depending on the data window selected for analysis.</p>","PeriodicalId":55172,"journal":{"name":"Ear and Hearing","volume":" ","pages":"444-460"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11825489/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142677797","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Breathy Vocal Quality, Background Noise, and Hearing Loss: How Do These Adverse Conditions Affect Speech Perception by Older Adults?","authors":"Jing Shen, Elizabeth Heller Murray","doi":"10.1097/AUD.0000000000001599","DOIUrl":"10.1097/AUD.0000000000001599","url":null,"abstract":"<p><strong>Objectives: </strong>Although breathy vocal quality and hearing loss are both prevalent age-related changes, their combined impact on speech communication is poorly understood. This study investigated whether breathy vocal quality affected speech perception and listening effort by older listeners. Furthermore, the study examined how this effect was modulated by the adverse listening environment of background noise and the listener's level of hearing loss.</p><p><strong>Design: </strong>Nineteen older adults participated in the study. Their hearing ranged from near-normal to mild-moderate sensorineural hearing loss. Participants heard speech material of low-context sentences, with stimuli resynthesized to simulate original, mild-moderately breathy, and severely breathy conditions. Speech intelligibility was measured using a speech recognition in noise paradigm, with pupillometry data collected simultaneously to measure listening effort.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong>Simulated severely breathy vocal quality was found to reduce intelligibility and increase listening effort. Breathiness and background noise level independently modulated listening effort. The impact of hearing loss was not observed in this dataset, which can be due to the use of individualized signal to noise ratios and a small sample size.</p><p><strong>Conclusion: </strong>Results from this study demonstrate the challenges of listening to speech with a breathy vocal quality. Theoretically, the findings highlight the importance of periodicity cues in speech perception in noise by older listeners. Breathy voice could be challenging to separate from the noise when the noise also lacks periodicity. Clinically, it suggests the need to address both listener- and talker-related factors in speech communication by older adults.</p>","PeriodicalId":55172,"journal":{"name":"Ear and Hearing","volume":" ","pages":"474-482"},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11832343/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142569605","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"医学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}