Abstract

A thorough understanding of the abilities of normal-hearing and hearing- impaired individuals to perceive spectral-temporal properties of speech is lacking. In particular, the relation between the basic capabilities of the auditory system to process speech and the perception of speech in normal discourse is poorly understood. Proposed extensions of our previous research should help remedy this need. The first line of research uses psychophysical techniques to determine listener abilities to detect, discriminate, and identify vowels, including modeling of the peripheral auditory processing of these complex sounds. The outcome of these experiments will provide detailed knowledge of the peripheral processing of vowels, as well as the influence of more centrally located processes (e.g. memory). Additional discrimination studies ill examine: (1) the influence of gender-related properties of the glottal source on vowel formants; and (2) the effects of the dynamic variation of formants observed in normal English vowels. Models of auditory processing that provide a detailed description of the psychophysical properties of vowels will be developed. The focus of the project is to gain detailed knowledge of one of the most salient properties of speech, vowels, in normal-hearing persons. Selected studies will be extended to include hearing-impaired persons to examine the negative effects of hearing loss on speech reception and their possible remediation through amplification.

  Funding Agency

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01DC002229-03
Application #
2014530
Study Section
Hearing Research Study Section (HAR)
Project Start
1995-01-01
Project End
1999-12-31
Budget Start
1997-01-01
Budget End
1999-12-31
Support Year
3
Fiscal Year
1997
Total Cost
Indirect Cost

  Institution

Name
Indiana University Bloomington
Department
Other Health Professions
Type
Schools of Arts and Sciences
DUNS #
006046700
City
Bloomington
State
IN
Country
United States
Zip Code
47401

  Publications

Morgan, Shae D; Ferguson, Sarah Hargus (2017) Judgments of Emotion in Clear and Conversational Speech by Young Adults With Normal Hearing and Older Adults With Hearing Impairment. J Speech Lang Hear Res 60:2271-2280
Ferguson, Sarah Hargus; Quené, Hugo (2014) Acoustic correlates of vowel intelligibility in clear and conversational speech for young normal-hearing and elderly hearing-impaired listeners. J Acoust Soc Am 135:3570-84
Ferguson, Sarah Hargus (2012) Talker differences in clear and conversational speech: vowel intelligibility for older adults with hearing loss. J Speech Lang Hear Res 55:779-90
Bent, Tessa; Kewley-Port, Diane; Ferguson, Sarah Hargus (2010) Across-talker effects on non-native listeners' vowel perception in noise. J Acoust Soc Am 128:3142-51
Fogerty, Daniel; Kewley-Port, Diane (2009) Perceptual contributions of the consonant-vowel boundary to sentence intelligibility. J Acoust Soc Am 126:847-57
Lee, Jae Hee; Kewley-Port, Diane (2009) Intelligibility of interrupted sentences at subsegmental levels in young normal-hearing and elderly hearing-impaired listeners. J Acoust Soc Am 125:1153-63
Oglesbee, Eric; Kewley-Port, Diane (2009) Estimating vowel formant discrimination thresholds using a single-interval classification task. J Acoust Soc Am 125:2323-35
Nishi, Kanae; Kewley-Port, Diane (2008) Nonnative speech perception training using vowel subsets: effects of vowels in sets and order of training. J Speech Lang Hear Res 51:1480-93
Nishi, Kanae; Kewley-Port, Diane (2007) Training Japanese listeners to perceive American English vowels: influence of training sets. J Speech Lang Hear Res 50:1496-509
Liu, Chang; Kewley-Port, Diane (2007) Factors affecting vowel formant discrimination by hearing-impaired listeners. J Acoust Soc Am 122:2855-64

Showing the most recent 10 out of 20 publications