Improving speech intelligibility in fluctuating background interference

The masking release (MR; i.e., better speech recognition in fluctuating compared to continuous noise backgrounds) that is evident for normal-hearing (NH) listeners is generally reduced or absent in hearing-impaired (HI) listeners. In this study, a signal-processing technique was developed to improve MR in HI listeners and offer insight into the mechanisms influencing the size of MR. This technique compares short-term and long-term estimates of energy, increases the level of short-term segments whose energy is below the average energy, and normalizes the overall energy of the processed signal to be equivalent to that of the original long-term estimate. In consonant-identification tests, HI listeners achieved similar scores for processed and unprocessed stimuli in quiet and in continuous-noise backgrounds, while superior performance was obtained for the processed speech in some of the fluctuating background noises. Thus, the energy-normalized signals led to larger values of MR compared to that obtained with unprocessed signals.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2016

Author dc:creator

• D'Aquila, Laura A

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Charlotte M. Reed and Louis D. Braida.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/106025

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/106025