Effects of word familiarity on word intelligibility for listeners with presbycusis in noise and reverberation

Abstract

Listening tests to assess word intelligibility were performed to estimate the effects of presbycusis under control of the word familiarity in experimental sound fields with noise and/or reverberation. The test words used in the present tests were selected to have similar word familiarities [Sakamoto et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Jpn. 54, 842−849 (1998)]. Moreover, difference/similarity of the effect of word familiarity on speech intelligibility between young listeners with normal hearing and elderly listeners with impaired hearing was also examined. The results demonstrate that: (1) Comparing the intelligibilities of the elderly with that of the young, the normal hearing subjects can tolerate 5 dB A more intensive noise than impaired listeners. (2) The word intelligibility of young subjects shows a 25% higher score than that of the aged. This result is very similar to sentence intelligibility [Sato et al., Proc. Noise Effects ’98 (Sydney, Australia) 168−173 (1998)] and Japanese trisyllable intelligibility [Sato et al., J. Archit. Plann. Environ. Eng. AIJ, 15−20 (1997)]. (3) The effect of word familiarity on word intelligibility is almost equal between the young normal and elderly impaired subjects.