Abstract
An eye-tracking paradigm was developed for use in audiology in order to enable online analysis of the speech comprehension process. This paradigm should be useful in assessing impediments in speech processing. In this paradigm, two scenes, a target picture and a competitor picture, were presented simultaneously with an aurally presented sentence that corresponded to the target picture. At the same time, eye fixations were recorded using an eye-tracking device. The effect of linguistic complexity on language processing time was assessed from eye fixation information by systematically varying linguistic complexity. This was achieved with a sentence corpus containing seven German sentence structures. A novel data analysis method computed the average tendency to fixate the target picture as a function of time during sentence processing. This allowed identification of the point in time at which the participant understood the sentence, referred to as the decision moment. Systematic differences in processing time were observed as a function of linguistic complexity. These differences in processing time may be used to assess the efficiency of cognitive processes involved in resolving linguistic complexity. Thus, the proposed method enables a temporal analysis of the speech comprehension process and has potential applications in speech audiology and psychoacoustics.
Highlights
Speech intelligibility tests are an indispensable tool in clinical audiology
The current study focuses on developing a method for assessing the speech comprehension process and processing speed as indicators of the cognitive effort required at levels of high intelligibility
This study aims to determine whether this combination of speech intelligibility testing and eye tracking can detect a systematic deceleration in speech processing due to an increase in cognitive processing effort that is sufficiently large and robust to be used in audiology
Summary
Speech intelligibility tests are an indispensable tool in clinical audiology. Research has shown that additional performance information about the ease of speech comprehension or cognitive effort during speech processing can complement traditional speech intelligibility measures. Increased cognitive effort is indicated by poorer task performance and processing time and can be measured in terms of recognition accuracy or reaction time, for instance [9,10]. The current study focuses on developing a method for assessing the speech comprehension process and processing speed as indicators of the cognitive effort required at levels of high intelligibility. This study aims to determine whether this combination of speech intelligibility testing and eye tracking can detect a systematic deceleration in speech processing due to an increase in cognitive processing effort that is sufficiently large and robust to be used in audiology. A further question is whether the deceleration effect is detected by either recognition scores or reaction times alone
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