BACKGROUND Older adults manifest difficulties in speech perception, especially when speech is accompanied by noise or when speech is rapid. Several explanations have been suggested to account for age-related changes in speech perception, such as changes in hearing sensitivity or a more general decline in cognitive functioning. The purpose of the present study was to directly examine the relativ...

We introduce a method for measuring the correspondence between low-level speech features and human perception, using a cognitive model of speech perception implemented directly on speech recordings. We evaluate two speaker normalization techniques using this method and find that in both cases, speech features that are normalized across speakers predict human data better than unnormalized speech...

The effects of classroom noise and background speech on speech perception, measured by word-to-picture matching, and listening comprehension, measured by execution of oral instructions, were assessed in first- and third-grade children and adults in a classroom-like setting. For speech perception, in addition to noise, reverberation time (RT) was varied by conducting the experiment in two virtua...

An extensive body of research on the perception of synthetic speech carried out over the past 30 years has established that listeners have much more difficulty perceiving synthetic speech than natural speech. Differences in perceptual processing have been found in a variety of behavioral tasks, including assessments of segmental intelligibility, word recall, lexical decision, sentence transcrip...

HYPOTHESIS That early word learning and speech perception skills have different sensitive periods and that very early implantation may affect later vocabulary outcomes more than speech perception outcomes. BACKGROUND Several studies have found that deaf children who receive cochlear implants before 3 years of age tend to have better speech perception outcomes than children implanted later. Re...