Transition duration effects on place perception in hearing-impaired listeners.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine the contribution of transition duration in signaling an alveolar/velar place-of-articulation contrast to listeners with mild-to-moderate sensorineural hearing loss. In the experiments reported here, F1, F2, and F3 transitions were varied between values appropriate for [deh] and [geh]. These were combined with transition durations ranging from 20 to 50 ms in 5-ms steps. In three separate identification tasks, listeners were presented with: (1) all levels of formant pattern varied orthogonally with all transition duration values; (2) all levels of formant pattern combined with an ambiguous duration value; and (3) all levels of transition duration combined with an ambiguous formant pattern. A trend was observed for hearing-impaired listeners to identify stimuli with shorter transition durations as [deh] in the absence of other unequivocal cues for place of articulation. Overall performance of hearing-impaired listeners was more variable than that of normal listeners, predicted in part by the results of Summerfield etal. [Speech Commun. 4, 213–229 (1985)], in which hearing-impaired listeners showed a decreased ability to identify place of articulation from transition information alone. Results of these experiments will be discussed in terms of current views of temporal processing in hearing-impaired listeners. [Work supported by NIH.]