Effects of talker gender and spatial location on sentence recognition for young and
old listeners with normal hearing

Lee, Jae Hee; Chang, Hyun Mee

doi:2011.7.2.145

Audiol > Volume 7(2); 2011 > Article

Research Paper

Audiology 2011;7(2): 145-152.
Published online: December 31, 2011.
doi: http://doi.org/10.21848/audiol.2011.7.2.145

화자의 성별과 위치가 건청 성인 및 노인군의 문장인지에 미치는 영향

이재희¹, 장현미^2,3

¹한림국제대학원대학교 청각학과
²한림국제대학원대학교 청각학 전공
³서울아산병원 이비인후과

Effects of talker gender and spatial location on sentence recognition for young and old listeners with normal hearing

Jae Hee Lee¹, Hyun Mee Chang^2,3

¹Department of Audiology, Hallym University of Graduate Studies, Seoul, Korea
²Graduate Program in Department of Audiology, Hallym University of Graduate Studies, Seoul, Korea
³Department of Otolaryngology, Asan Medical Center, Seoul, Korea

Correspondence

Jae Hee Lee ,Tel: (02) 2051-2942, Fax: (02) 3453-6618, Email: leejaehee@hallym.ac.kr

Received: November 3, 2011; Revised: November 29, 2011 Accepted: December 6, 2011. Published online: December 31, 2011.

ABSTRACT

This study aimed to determine the effect of gender and spatial difference between two talkers on the sentence recognition of young and old listeners with normal hearing. Gender difference was manipulated using gender-matched (i.e., male-male or female-female) or gender-mismatched (i.e., male-female or female-male) sentence pairs. Four spatial separation conditions (-45/45°, -90/90°, -135/135°, 180° azimuth) were presented through eight directional speakers. The ability of sentence recognition was identified by key word scoring. Overall, young normal-hearing (YNH) listeners performed better than old normal-hearing listeners (ONH) in all conditions. The gender mismatch between two talkers was beneficial to recognize closed-set sentences by creating the release from informational masking, more for the ONH group compared to the YNH group. The effect of spatial separation was not significant in both groups. Year of education for ONH listeners significantly affected their two-talker speech recognition. Results of individual differences in ONH listeners suggest that the ability to use acoustic cues given by gender and spatial difference between two competing talkers appears to be related to their cognitive ability.

Key Words: Aging, Closed-set sentence recognition, Gender difference, Spatial separation.

중심단어: 노화, 문장인지, 화자 간 성별차이, 화자 간 위치차이