Interactions between auditory quality, linguistic context, short-term memory, and speech recognition

Abstract

The ability to recognize speech depends on several factors, including the quality of the auditory input, linguistic context, and the listener’s cognitive abilities. These factors correlate with speech recognition, but less consideration has been given to how these factors interact. Here, we present evidence from two studies indicating that interactions exist between quality, context, and short-term memory. In study one, we demonstrate that contextual expectations across stimulus sets can determine the relationship between auditory quality and short-term memory. Specifically, recall of lists of digits is not affected by noise-band vocoding, whereas vocoding impairs both item identification and recall for lists of single syllable words drawn from a large, untrained set. In study two, we demonstrate that correlations between digit list recall and PRESTO sentence recognition are strongest when auditory quality is poor, whereas correlations between digit and word list recall weaken with decreasing auditory quality. This finding suggests that auditory quality and semantic context moderate the relationship between memory and speech recognition. We conclude that incorporating experimental measures of auditory quality, short-term memory, and recognition of speech materials with different contexts will provide a clearer perspective on how these factors relate to speech recognition in listeners with hearing loss.The ability to recognize speech depends on several factors, including the quality of the auditory input, linguistic context, and the listener’s cognitive abilities. These factors correlate with speech recognition, but less consideration has been given to how these factors interact. Here, we present evidence from two studies indicating that interactions exist between quality, context, and short-term memory. In study one, we demonstrate that contextual expectations across stimulus sets can determine the relationship between auditory quality and short-term memory. Specifically, recall of lists of digits is not affected by noise-band vocoding, whereas vocoding impairs both item identification and recall for lists of single syllable words drawn from a large, untrained set. In study two, we demonstrate that correlations between digit list recall and PRESTO sentence recognition are strongest when auditory quality is poor, whereas correlations between digit and word list recall weaken with decreasing auditory qua...