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J Am Acad Audiol 2021; 32(08): 528-536
DOI: 10.1055/s-0041-1732438
Research Article

The Impact of Neurocognitive Skills on Recognition of Spectrally Degraded Sentences

Authors

  • Jessica H. Lewis

    1   Department of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery; The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, Columbus, Ohio
    2   Department of Speech and Hearing Science; The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio

  • Irina Castellanos

    1   Department of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery; The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, Columbus, Ohio

  • Aaron C. Moberly

    1   Department of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery; The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, Columbus, Ohio

Funding Development of measures used in this work was supported by the National Institutes of Health, National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) Career Development Award 5K23DC015539-02 to A.C.M.
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Abstract

Background Recent models theorize that neurocognitive resources are deployed differently during speech recognition depending on task demands, such as the severity of degradation of the signal or modality (auditory vs. audiovisual [AV]). This concept is particularly relevant to the adult cochlear implant (CI) population, considering the large amount of variability among CI users in their spectro-temporal processing abilities. However, disentangling the effects of individual differences in spectro-temporal processing and neurocognitive skills on speech recognition in clinical populations of adult CI users is challenging. Thus, this study investigated the relationship between neurocognitive functions and recognition of spectrally degraded speech in a group of young adult normal-hearing (NH) listeners.

Purpose The aim of this study was to manipulate the degree of spectral degradation and modality of speech presented to young adult NH listeners to determine whether deployment of neurocognitive skills would be affected.

Research Design Correlational study design.

Study Sample Twenty-one NH college students.

Data Collection and Analysis Participants listened to sentences in three spectral-degradation conditions: no degradation (clear sentences); moderate degradation (8-channel noise-vocoded); and high degradation (4-channel noise-vocoded). Thirty sentences were presented in an auditory-only (A-only) modality and an AV fashion. Visual assessments from The National Institute of Health Toolbox Cognitive Battery were completed to evaluate working memory, inhibition-concentration, cognitive flexibility, and processing speed. Analyses of variance compared speech recognition performance among spectral degradation condition and modality. Bivariate correlation analyses were performed among speech recognition performance and the neurocognitive skills in the various test conditions.

Results Main effects on sentence recognition were found for degree of degradation (p = < 0.001) and modality (p = < 0.001). Inhibition-concentration skills moderately correlated (r = 0.45, p = 0.02) with recognition scores for sentences that were moderately degraded in the A-only condition. No correlations were found among neurocognitive scores and AV speech recognition scores.

Conclusions Inhibition-concentration skills are deployed differentially during sentence recognition, depending on the level of signal degradation. Additional studies will be required to study these relations in actual clinical populations such as adult CI users.

Keywords

audiovisual speech - cochlear implant - neurocognitive function - vocoded speech recognition

Note

Data from this manuscript were presented at The 47th Annual Scientific and Technology Conference of the American Auditory Society; March 5-7, 2020, Scottsdale, AZ. Research reported in this paper received IRB approval from The Ohio State University.




Publikationsverlauf

Eingereicht: 03. Februar 2021

Angenommen: 25. Mai 2021

Artikel online veröffentlicht:
29. Dezember 2021

© 2021. American Academy of Audiology. This article is published by Thieme.

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