Relationship Between Auditory Distraction and Emotional Dimensionality for Non-Speech Sounds.

Objectives: If task-irrelevant sounds are present when someone is actively listening to speech, the irrelevant sounds can cause distraction, reducing word recognition performance and increasing listening effort. In some previous investigations into auditory distraction, the task-irrelevant stimuli were non-speech sounds (e.g.

Talker Differences in Perceived Emotion in Clear and Conversational Speech.

Purpose: Previous work has shown that judgments of emotion differ between clear and conversational speech, particularly for perceived anger. The current study examines talker differences in perceived emotion for a database of talkers producing clear and conversational speech.

Method: A database of 41 talkers was used to assess talker differences in six emotion categories ("Anger," "Fear," "Disgust," "Happiness," "Sadness," and "Neutral").

Methodological Stimulus Considerations for Auditory Emotion Recognition Test Design.

Purpose: Many studies have investigated test design influences (e.g., number of stimuli, open- vs.

Within-talker and within-session stability of acoustic characteristics of conversational and clear speaking stylesa).

In speech production research, talkers often perform a speech task several times per recording session with different speaking styles or in different environments. For example, Lombard speech studies typically have talkers speak in several different noise conditions. However, it is unknown to what degree simple repetition of a speech task affects speech acoustic characteristics or whether repetition effects might offset or exaggerate effects of speaking style or environment.

Gender stereotypes and social perception of vocal confidence is mitigated by salience of socio-indexical cues to gender.

Introduction: Socio-indexical cues to gender and vocal affect often interact and sometimes lead listeners to make differential judgements of affective intent based on the gender of the speaker. Previous research suggests that rising intonation is a common cue that both women and men produce to communicate lack of confidence, but listeners are more sensitive to this cue when it is produced by women. Some speech perception theories assume that listeners will track conditional statistics of speech and language cues (e.

Adopting Change and Incorporating Technological Advancements in Audiology Education, Research, and Clinical Practice.

Purpose: With the rapid development of new technologies and resources, many avenues exist to adapt and grow as a profession. Embracing change can lead to growth, evolution, and new opportunities. Audiologists have the potential to harness many of these technological advancements to improve patient health care.

Virtual audiology education tools: A survey of faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate students.

Due to global shifts at educational institutions from in-person courses to online formats caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the current study aimed to estimate whether currently available virtual audiology education tools are helpful for acquiring necessary audiology skills and knowledge from the perspective of both educators and students. Therefore, a remote survey was developed and distributed to faculty and students in undergraduate communication sciences disorders and graduate audiology programs. Although participation was somewhat limited, the trends observed in the survey results suggested that the majority of both educators and students found the subset of virtual tools easy to use, that these tools improved teaching methods and learning outcomes, and that these tools would likely be used again.

Gender stereotypes drive perceptual differences of vocal confidence.

One's ability to express confidence is critical to achieve one's goals in a social context-such as commanding respect from others, establishing higher social status, and persuading others. How individuals perceive confidence may be shaped by the socio-indexical cues produced by the speaker. In the current production/perception study, we asked four speakers (two cisgender women/men) to answer trivia questions under three speaking contexts: natural, overconfident, and underconfident (i.

Perceived Anger in Clear and Conversational Speech: Contributions of Age and Hearing Loss.

A previous investigation demonstrated differences between younger adult normal-hearing listeners and older adult hearing-impaired listeners in the perceived emotion of clear and conversational speech. Specifically, clear speech sounded angry more often than conversational speech for both groups, but the effect was smaller for the older listeners. These listener groups differed by two confounding factors, age (younger vs.

Bactericidal effects of high-energy visible light on common otitis media pathogens.

Aims: This study assessed the use of high-energy, visible light on the survival rates of three bacteria commonly found in middle ear infections (i.e. otitis media; Streptococcus pneumoniae, Moraxella catarrhalis and Haemophilus influenzae).

Emotion and Word Recognition for Unprocessed and Vocoded Speech Stimuli.

Objectives: Individuals with cochlear implants (CIs) show reduced word and auditory emotion recognition abilities relative to their peers with normal hearing. Modern CI processing strategies are designed to preserve acoustic cues requisite for word recognition rather than those cues required for accessing other signal information (e.g.

Comparing Emotion Recognition and Word Recognition in Background Noise.

Purpose Word recognition in quiet and in background noise has been thoroughly investigated in previous research to establish segmental speech recognition performance as a function of stimulus characteristics (e.g., audibility).

Intelligibility of British- and American-Accented Sentences for American Younger and Older Listeners With and Without Hearing Loss.

Background: Older adults with hearing loss often report difficulty understanding British-accented speech, such as in television or movies, after having understood such speech in the past. A few studies have examined the intelligibility of various United States regional and non-U.S.

Does Time Compression Decrease Intelligibility for Female Talkers More Than for Male Talkers?

Purpose This preliminary investigation compared effects of time compression on intelligibility for male versus female talkers. We hypothesized that time compression would have a greater effect for female talkers. Method Sentence materials from four talkers (two males) were time compressed, and original-speed and time-compressed speech materials were presented in a background of 12-talker babble to young adult listeners with normal hearing.

Categorical and Dimensional Ratings of Emotional Speech: Behavioral Findings From the Morgan Emotional Speech Set.

Purpose Emotion classification for auditory stimuli typically employs 1 of 2 approaches (discrete categories or emotional dimensions). This work presents a new emotional speech set, compares these 2 classification methods for emotional speech stimuli, and emphasizes the need to consider the entire communication model (i.e.

Acoustic correlates of female confidence: A production and comprehension study.

In the current study, an interactive approach is used to explore possible contributors to the misattributions listeners make about female talker expression of confidence. To do this, the expression and identification of confidence was evaluated through the evaluation of talker- (e.g.

Talker Differences in Clear and Conversational Speech: Perceived Sentence Clarity for Young Adults With Normal Hearing and Older Adults With Hearing Loss.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine talker differences for subjectively rated speech clarity in clear versus conversational speech, to determine whether ratings differ for young adults with normal hearing (YNH listeners) and older adults with hearing impairment (OHI listeners), and to explore effects of certain talker characteristics (e.g., gender) on perceived clarity.

Judgments of Emotion in Clear and Conversational Speech by Young Adults With Normal Hearing and Older Adults With Hearing Impairment.

Purpose: In this study, we investigated the emotion perceived by young listeners with normal hearing (YNH listeners) and older adults with hearing impairment (OHI listeners) when listening to speech produced conversationally or in a clear speaking style.

Method: The first experiment included 18 YNH listeners, and the second included 10 additional YNH listeners along with 20 OHI listeners. Participants heard sentences spoken conversationally and clearly.