Talker identification: Effects of masking, hearing loss, and age

Abstract

The ability to identify who is talking is an important aspect of communication in social situations and, while empirical data are limited, it is possible that a disruption to this ability contributes to the difficulties experienced by listeners with hearing loss. In this study, talker identification was examined under both quiet and masked conditions. Subjects were grouped by hearing status (normal hearing/sensorineural hearing loss) and age (younger/older adults). Listeners first learned to identify the voices of four same-sex talkers in quiet, and then talker identification was assessed (1) in quiet, (2) in speech-shaped, steady-state noise, and (3) in the presence of a single, unfamiliar same-sex talker. Both younger and older adults with hearing loss, as well as older adults with normal hearing, generally performed more poorly than younger adults with normal hearing, although large individual differences were observed in all conditions. Regression analyses indicated that both age and hearing loss were predictors of performance in quiet, and there was some evidence for an additional contribution of hearing loss in the presence of masking. These findings suggest that both hearing loss and age may affect the ability to identify talkers in "cocktail party" situations.

FIG. 1.

Mean audiograms for each group (collapsed across left and right ears). Error bars show ±1 standard deviation across the eight participants in each group.

FIG. 2.

Mean F0 for each of the 24 talkers used in the experiment (left column: females; right column: males). Open symbols correspond to target talkers, which are labeled with the numbers 1–4 within each group.

FIG. 3.

Mean scores for each group in the first (left) and second (right) training phases. Error bars show ±1 standard deviation across the eight participants in each group.

FIG. 4.

Mean scores for each group in quiet (left), and mean scores in the presence of noise (middle) and competing talker (right) as a function of TMR. Error bars show ±1 standard deviation across the eight participants in each group.

FIG. 5.

Individual scores in quiet for the female (top row) and male (bottom row) talker sessions plotted against age (left panels) and 4FAHL (right panels).

FIG. 6.

Individual scores (averaged across TMR) plotted against quiet scores for the female (top row) and male (bottom row) talker sessions for both noise (left column) and competing talker (right column) conditions.

FIG. 7.

(Color online) Confusion matrices showing, for each target talker, the distribution of responses across the four talkers (collapsed across subjects and TMRs). The color map indicates a proportion between zero and one, with each row summing to one. Female and male talker sessions are shown in the top and bottom rows, while the quiet, noise, and competing talker conditions are shown in the left, middle, and right columns, respectively.