Contributions of lexical tone to Mandarin sentence recognition in hearing-impaired listeners under noisy conditions

• Main Authors: Li, N. (Author), Wang, S. (Author), Wang, X. (Author), Xu, L. (Author)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Acoustical Society of America 2019
• Subjects: adult; Adult; Asian continental ancestry group; Asian Continental Ancestry Group; Audition; female; Female; Hearing loss; Hearing Loss, Sensorineural; Hearing-impaired listeners; human; Humans; Lexical tones; male; Male; middle aged; Middle Aged; noise; Noise; Noisy conditions; Normal hearing; pathophysiology; perception deafness; phonetics; Phonetics; Sensorineural hearing loss; Sentence recognition; signal noise ratio; Signal to noise ratio; Signal-To-Noise Ratio; speech perception; Speech Perception; Speech recognition; Speech-shaped noise
• Online Access: View Fulltext in Publisher
• ISBN: 00014966 (ISSN)
• DOI: 10.1121/1.5120543

Mandarin sentence recognition using natural-tone and flat-tone sentences was tested in 22 subjects with sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) and 25 listeners with normal hearing (NH) in quiet, speech-shaped noise, and two-talker-babble conditions. While little effects of flat tones on sentence recognition were seen in the NH listeners when the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) was ≥0 dB, the SNHL listeners showed decreases in flat-tone-sentence recognition in quiet and at +5-dB SNR. Such declined performance was correlated with their degrees of hearing loss. Lexical tone contributes greatly to sentence recognition in hearing-impaired listeners in both quiet and in noise listening conditions. © 2019 Acoustical Society of America.