The Effects of Captioning Errors, Background Noise, and Hearing Loss on Memory for Text-Captioned Speech.

Purpose: Previous studies have suggested that the negative effects of acoustic challenge on speech memory can be attenuated with assistive text captions, particularly among older adults with hearing impairment. However, no studies have systematically examined the effects of text-captioning errors, which are common in automated speech recognition (ASR) systems.

Method: In two experiments, we examined memory for text-captioned speech (with and without background noise) when captions had no errors (control) or had one of three common ASR errors: substitution, deletion, or insertion errors.

Text Captioning Buffers Against the Effects of Background Noise and Hearing Loss on Memory for Speech.

Objective: Everyday speech understanding frequently occurs in perceptually demanding environments, for example, due to background noise and normal age-related hearing loss. The resulting degraded speech signals increase listening effort, which gives rise to negative downstream effects on subsequent memory and comprehension, even when speech is intelligible. In two experiments, we explored whether the presentation of realistic assistive text captioned speech offsets the negative effects of background noise and hearing impairment on multiple measures of speech memory.