Download Individual Differences in Speech Perception: Cognitive and

ASHA 2011, San Diego, Session# 8005 Poster Board 006
Individual Differences in Speech Perception: Cognitive and Perceptual Factors
JAIMIE L. GILBERT, TERRIN N. TAMATI, & DAVID B. PISONI
INDIANA UNIVERSITY, BLOOMINGTON
BACKGROUND
RESULTS
SUMMARY & CONCLUSIONS
Sentence Recognition Accuracy, Reliability, and Comparison
Phase 1 PRESTO Distribution
Identify normative performance
Identify Hi & Lo performers
Phase 2 PRESTO & HINT Distributions
Sentence Type x SNR
F(3, 114) = 121.36, p < .001
Frequency
The ability to understand speech in a wide variety of
environments produced by different talkers is a core,
fundamental characteristic of human speech perception.
However, individuals vary in their ability to understand
speech in adverse listening conditions, and this variation
cannot be solely explained by audibility. The indexical
properties of speech are processed simultaneously in
parallel with the symbolic/linguistic content of the talker’s
intended message (Pisoni, 1997). Other cognitive processes
may also underlie individual differences in speech perception
(Arlinger, Lunner, Lyxell, & Pichora-Fuller, 2009; Pisoni,
2000; Stenfelt & Rönnberg, 2009).
Gender
121
21
23.4 (3.0)
21.8 (1.7)
Materials
  Hearing Screener (25 dB HL)
  Sentences
  PRESTO Sentences (Phase 1 & Phase 2)
  HINT Sentences (Nilsson, Soli, & Sullivan, 1994)
(Phase 2)
  Both presented in 6-talker babble at 4 SNRs
 Cognitive Tests
  WASI Performance IQ (Non-Verbal Intelligence)
  Stroop Color-Word Test (Attention/Inhibition)
  Digit Span Forward (Short-Term Memory)
  Digit Span Backward (Working Memory)
  WordFam (Lexicon Size)
 Perceptual Tests
  Voice Gender Discrimination
  Talker Voice Discrimination
  Regional Dialect Categorization
20
0
80
60
LoPRESTO
HiPRESTO
40
20
0
20
40
60
80
100
0
20
40
60
80
100
PRESTO Phase 2 Overall % Correct
Cognitive & Perceptual Similarities Among Hi & Lo Performers
79 Female 16 Female 14 Female
42 Male
3 Male
7 Male
Mean Age (SD) In Years 22.2 (2.9)
LoPRESTO
HiPRESTO
40
PRESTO Phase 2 Overall % Correct
Phase 2
Phase 2
HiPRESTO LoPRESTO
19
60
WASI Performance IQ, Stroop Interference Scores, Talker Discrimination Accuracy & Response Time,
Gender Discrimination Response Time
Cognitive & Perceptual Differences Among Hi & Lo Performers
HiPRESTO had greater digit spans, forward &
backward, than LoPRESTO (p ≤ .05)
HiPRESTO was more accurate categorizing a
regional dialect than LoPRESTO (p < .05)
  However, listeners who performed better on PRESTO had
greater short-term memory span, greater working memory
span, a larger lexicon, better accuracy categorizing U.S.
regional dialects, and better accuracy when discriminating
between male and female voices.
Individual differences in speech perception in normalhearing subjects appear to be related to factors other
than audibility, attention, and global measures of
intelligence. Episodic memory and indexical processing
skills merit further investigation to describe their
observed role in speech perception under adverse
listening conditions and in explanations of individual
differences in speech perception performance.
FUTURE DIRECTIONS
 Develop PRESTO for clinical use.
 Investigate interaction of target and competing speech
variability.
 Investigate feasibility of training procedures to improve
speech perception skills.
KEY REFERENCES
  Arlinger, S., Lunner, T., Lyxell, B. & Pichora-Fuller, M. K. (2009). The
Emergence of Cognitive Hearing Science. Scandinavian Journal of
Psychology, 50, 371-384.
9
8
Maximum Span
N
Phase 1
100
80
7
6
5
4
  Felty, R. (2008). Perceptually Robust English Sentence Test (OpenSet). Unpublished manuscript, Indiana University Bloomington.
LoPRESTO
HiPRESTO
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2
  Garofolo, J. S., Lamel, L. F., Fisher, W. M., Fiscus, J. G., Pallett, D. S.,
& Dahlgren, N. L. (1993). The DARPA TIMIT acoustic-phonetic
continuous speech corpus. Linguistic Data Consortium, Philadelphia.
1
0
Forward
Backward
Digit Span
HiPRESTO had more familiarity with low and
medium frequency words (p < .001), but not high
frequency words (p = .053) than LoPRESTO
7
6
Familiarity Rating
Normal-hearing,
Native English Speakers
Phase 2 PRESTO & HINT Sentence Comparison
Hi group more accurate than Lo group on both sentence types (p < .01)
Accuracy on PRESTO & HINT Sentences correlated (r = .52, p = .001)
100
0
METHODS
Participants
Phase 1 & 2 PRESTO Reliability
n = 40, r = .92, p < .001
HINT (Phase 2) Overall %
Correct
  PRESTO (Felty, 2008)
  TIMIT Sentences (Garafolo, et al., 1993)
  Structured into lists of 18 sentences (Felty, 2008)
  No utterance repeated
  Each list contains variation in:
  Syntactic structure & length
  Key word familiarity & log frequency
  Talker dialect
Overall Mean Keyword Accuracy (%)
PRESTO Phase 1 Overall %
Correct
Perceptually Robust English Sentence Test Open-set
Goal 2: HiPRESTO vs. LoPRESTO (Extreme Groups)
  The two extreme groups maintained their differences in
accuracy on re-test, and also differed on HINT presented in
multi-talker babble.
 The two extreme groups did not differ on measures of nonverbal intelligence, attention/inhibition, speed of response
when discriminating between talkers or genders, or talker
discrimination accuracy.
EXPERIMENTAL GOALS
1)  Examine individual differences in speech recognition in
adverse listening conditions. (Phase 1)
2)  Compare individuals with high sentence recognition
accuracy to individuals with low sentence recognition
accuracy. (Phase 2)
Goal 1: Performance on PRESTO
  Normal-hearing participants demonstrated a wide range of
scores in sentence recognition accuracy on the highvariability PRESTO sentences.
5
4
LoPRESTO
HiPRESTO
3
HiPRESTO more accurately discriminated
between male and female voices than
LoPRESTO, overall and on same trials (p < .05)
  Pisoni, D. B. (1997). Some thoughts on “normalization“ in speech
perception. In K. Johnson & J. W. Mullennix (Eds.), Talker variability in
speech processing (pp. 9–32). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
  Pisoni, D. B. (2000). Cognitive factors and cochlear implants: Some
thoughts on perception, learning, and memory in speech perception.
Ear & Hearing, 21, 70-78.
  Stenfelt, S. & Rönnberg, J. (2009). The Signal-Cognition interface:
Interactions between degraded auditory signals and cognitive
processes. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 50, 385-393.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work was supported by NIH-NIDCD Training Grant T32-DC00012 and
NIH-NIDCD Research Grant R01-DC000111.
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1
Low
Medium
High
Word Frequency
Overall
Thanks to Luis Hernandez, Marissa Habeshy, Jillian Badell, Casey
Freeman, Sushma Tatineni, & Emily Garl for assistance with this project.