The influence of female versus malespeakers’ voice on speech recognitionthresholds in noise: Effects of low and high-frequency hearing impairment

• Purpose: To investigate the effect of female versus male speakers’ voice on the ability to recognize speech innoise in two groups of sensorineural hearing-impaired listeners, one group with impairment at lowfrequencies and the other at high frequencies.Method: Eight participants with high-frequency hearing impairments (Hf-HI) and seven with low-frequencyhearing impairments (Lf-HI) participated. Sixteen normal hearing (NH) participants served as reference.The sentences from the hearing in noise test, read by a female or a male speaker, were presentedmonaurally with a background noise. In an adaptive procedure, the mean speech recognition threshold,for 50% correctly recognized sentences, was calculated for the female and male voice and each test subject.Results: The Hf-HI group had significantly greater difference in signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) results betweenfemale and male voices. Irrespective of hearing impairment, the female voice required 2.1 dB better SNR.In addition, the NH group showed a small but significant difference in favor of the male voice.Conclusions: Results indicate that speaker gender matters for hearing impaired and NH individuals’ ability torecognize speech in noise.

Ämnesord

MEDICIN OCH HÄLSOVETENSKAP  -- Klinisk medicin -- Oto-rhino-laryngologi (hsv//swe)

MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES  -- Clinical Medicine -- Otorhinolaryngology (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Fundamental frequency

Hearing impairment

Speech in noise

Hearing in noise test

Speech recognition threshold

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