Masking Release for Speech-in-Speech Recognition Due to a Target/Masker Sex Mismatch in Children With Hearing Loss.
Lori J Leibold, Jenna M Browning, Emily Buss
PMID 31365355WHAT IT FOUND
Children with hearing loss benefit less than peers with normal hearing when target and background talkers are different sexes.
They still gain some clarity from the voice mismatch, but the advantage is smaller than in normal-hearing children.
Key findings
01The average benefit from a target/masker sex mismatch was 3.2 dB for children with hearing loss and 5.9 dB for children with normal hearing.
02Children with hearing loss required 4.5 dB more signal-to-noise ratio than peers with normal hearing in the male target/two-female-talker condition, compared to a 1.4 dB gap in the male target/two-male-talker condition.
03All children except one showed a sex-mismatch benefit for the male target talker, while 17 of 18 children with hearing loss and 16 of 18 children with normal hearing showed a benefit for the female target talker.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The sample size was small (18 per group). The study used a limited number of target and masker talkers. Speech recognition was tested using a forced-choice word identification task, which may not reflect open-set listening demands. The study did not determine whether the reduced benefit was due to peripheral hearing loss or reduced auditory experience.
Declared interests
The study was supported by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (N.I.H., Extramural). No specific author conflicts of interest were reported in the provided text.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that children with hearing loss cannot benefit from voice differences. They do show a sex-mismatch benefit, but it is smaller than in peers with normal hearing. Also, do not assume the degree of hearing loss predicts the size of this benefit, as no significant correlation was found.