Breathy Vocal Quality, Background Noise, and Hearing Loss: How Do These Adverse Conditions Affect Speech Perception by Older Adults?

The sample was small (19 older adults) and hearing thresholds ranged from near-normal to mild-moderate loss, so it does not show what happens with severe hearing loss or larger populations. The breathy voices were simulated from one original female speaker's sentences, not recorded from older adults with voice disorders, so the acoustic pattern may not match a real clinical voice. The noise was non-speech 2-talker-like noise without periodicity, so the lack of interaction between breathiness and noise may not apply to real conversations with speech maskers. Individualized signal-to-noise ratios were used to equalize task demand, and this design was correlated with hearing loss, which may have reduced the chance of detecting a hearing-loss effect. Participants were native General American English speakers, passed cognitive screening, and had symmetrical hearing without neurological disorders, so findings may not extend to other language backgrounds or cognitive status.

Do not use this paper to predict how a patient with a real breathy voice or hearing loss will communicate. The breathiness was simulated, the sample was small, and hearing loss did not show an effect.