Abstract
Suboptimal listening conditions interfere with listeners’ on-line comprehension. A degraded source signal, noise that interferes with sound transmission, and/or listeners’ cognitive or linguistic limitations are examples of adverse listening conditions. Few studies have explored the interaction of these factors in pediatric populations. Yet, they represent an increasing challenge in educational settings. We will in the following report on our research and address the effect of adverse listening conditions pertaining to speakers’ voices, background noise, and children’s cognitive capacity on listening comprehension. Results from our studies clearly indicate that children risk underachieving both in formal assessments and in noisy class-rooms when an examiner or teacher speaks with a hoarse (dysphonic) voice. This seems particularly true when task complexity is low or when a child is approaching her/his limits of mastering a comprehension task.
Highlights
Poor listening environments are challenging for typically developing children with normal hearing and even more so for children struggling with listening comprehension in different disability groups (Khalfa et al, 2004)
Little attention has been paid to the role which source signal alterations, for example changes in speakers’ speaking rate, may play for children’s listening comprehension
The relative contribution of the voice quality per se cannot be teased out. These combined results indicate synergistic detrimental effects on children’s listening comprehension in a class-room when dysphonic teachers try to make themselves heard in ambient noise
Summary
Poor listening environments are challenging for typically developing children with normal hearing and even more so for children struggling with listening comprehension in different disability groups (Khalfa et al, 2004). Preliminary analyses yielded no overall difference between voice qualities, but response times increased with task difficulty in both conditions and were longer for girls in the dysphonic condition (with mimicked and vocally loading induced dysphonia) as compared to the girls in the typical voice condition and to the boys in both conditions. In yet another study, Lyberg-Åhlander et al (2015b) explored what happens when children listen to a typical versus a dysphonic speaker in simultaneous background babble-noise. The relative contribution of the voice quality per se cannot be teased out Even so, importantly, these combined results indicate synergistic detrimental effects on children’s listening comprehension in a class-room when dysphonic teachers try to make themselves heard in ambient noise. Children might try to either deceive or please the test-leader (DeRight and Carone, 2015)
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