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Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research Vol.52 653-670 June 2009. doi:10.1044/1092-4388(2008/08-0038)
© American Speech-Language-Hearing Association
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Articles

Spectral Tilt Change in Stop Consonant Perception by Listeners With Hearing Impairment

Joshua M. Alexander
Keith R. Kluender
University of Wisconsin, Madison

Contact author: Joshua M. Alexander, who is now at Boys Town National Research Hospital, 555 North 30th Street, Omaha, NE 68131. E-mail: alexanderj{at}boystown.org.

Purpose: To evaluate how perceptual importance of spectral tilt is altered when formant information is degraded by sensorineural hearing loss.

Method: Eighteen listeners with mild to moderate hearing impairment (HI listeners) and 20–23 listeners with normal hearing (NH listeners) identified synthesized stimuli that varied in second formant (F2) frequency and spectral tilt. Experiments 1 and 2 examined utterance-initial stops (/ba/ and /da/), and Experiments 3 and 4 examined medial stops (/aba/ and /ada/). Spectral tilt was manipulated at either consonant onset (Experiments 1 and 3), vowels (Experiments 2 and 4), or both (Experiment 5).

Results: Regression analyses revealed that HI listeners weighted F2 substantially less than NH listeners. There was no difference in absolute tilt weights between groups. However, HI listeners emphasized tilt as much as F2 for medial stops. NH listeners weighted tilt primarily when F2 was ambiguous, whereas HI listeners weighted tilt significantly more than NH listeners on unambiguous F2 endpoints.

Conclusions: Attenuating changes in spectral tilt can be as deleterious as taking away F2 information for HI listeners. Recordings through a wide dynamic range compression hearing aid show compromised changes in spectral tilt, compressed in range by up to 50%.

KEY WORDS: hearing impairment, spectral tilt, stop consonant, hearing aid, compression


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