Childhood hearing impairment: processing dependencies in multidimensional speech perception for an auditory level of analysis
Abstract
Our purpose was to determine whether the influence of childhood hearing impairment (HI) on multidimensional speech processing is a purely linguistic effect or whether childhood HI also affects the processing of speech dimensions representing an auditory level of analysis. The processing dependencies characterizing the two dimensions of talker-gender and spatial location were studied in 40 children with HI and in two normal-hearing (NH) comparison groups representing similar chronological ages (N = 30) or similar vocabulary skills (N = 70). The processing interactions were assessed with a speeded selective-attention task requiring listeners to attend selectively to the gender of the talker and to ignore the spatial location and vice versa. The logic is that performance for the target dimension will not be affected by what is happening on the nontarget dimension if the dimensions are processed independently. On the other hand, if the dimensions are not processed independently, listeners will not be able to attend selectively and performance for the relevant dimension will be affected by what is happening on the irrelevant dimension. In the latter case, results may be analyzed in terms of Garner interference (the effect on perform...Continue Reading
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