Effect of Masker Head Orientation, Listener Age, and Extended High-Frequency Sensitivity on Speech Recognition in Spatially Separated Speech.
Meredith D Braza, Nicole E Corbin, Emily Buss and 1 others
PMID 34260434WHAT IT FOUND
Listeners understood speech better when background talkers faced away and when target and background talkers were separated.
Adults with poorer extended high frequency hearing gained less from background talkers facing away. Children gained less than adults.
Key findings
01Speech reception thresholds were better when maskers were spatially separated from the target and when maskers faced away from the listener.
02In adults, speech reception thresholds with non-facing maskers were associated with 16-kHz thresholds: thresholds increased by approximately 4.4 dB as mean 16-kHz thresholds increased from -20 to 65 dB HL in the co-located non-facing condition.
03Children had higher speech reception thresholds than adults by 5.0 to 8.3 dB and showed smaller benefits from spatial separation and masker orientation, with co-located orientation benefit 1.9 dB for children and 3.3 dB for adults.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study measured laboratory speech reception thresholds, not communication outcomes in everyday settings. The child group was small and narrow in age, with 15 children aged 5.1 to 7.8 years, so it cannot describe how these effects develop across childhood. Age and extended high frequency thresholds were highly correlated in adults, so age is a competing explanation for the threshold associations. Adults with normal extended high frequency thresholds were significantly younger than adults with elevated thresholds. The simulation used microphone recording angles, which preserved spectral cues but did not capture orientation-specific reverberation or subtle interaural differences. Some adults had subclinical threshold elevation at 4 or 8 kHz, which may also relate to performance.
Declared interests
The article reports NIH extramural research support, and the authors declare no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that elevated extended high frequency thresholds alone caused poorer speech recognition, because age and extended high frequency thresholds were highly correlated in the adults and age effects could not be separated.