Perception of Spectrally Enhanced Speech through Companding in Individuals with Auditory Dys-synchrony

Abstract

The study was taken up with the aim to know whether spectrally enhanced speech through compounding could improve speech perception of individuals with Auditory dys-synchrony in quiet and at different signal to noise ratios. To achieve the objective, 15 ears of fifteen individuals with auditory dys-synchrony and 15 ears of fifteen normal hearing individuals (mean age 27 years) were taken. Speech identification abilities of these individuals were assessed in quiet and at three different SNRs (+15 dB, +10 dB, +O dB) for VCV syllables with and without companding. The minimum SNR at which these individuals correctly identified 50% of the words in a sentence was also assessed using Quick SlN sentences test in Kannada with and without companding. Results showed that as the SNR increased, the number of syllables correctly identified increased for V CV syllables in both with and without companding conditions , in both the groups. Normal hearing individuals showed significantly better performance for companded stimuli compared to non companded VCV syllables at+ 0 dB SNR. Individuals with auditory dys-synchrony demonstrated this trend in quiet. Also, they required significantly lower SNR (better) for companded sentences than non companded sentences to correctly identify 50% words in a sentence. For companded sentences, SNR required to correctly identify 50% of the words in a sentence was lower than that of the non companded sentences, in both the groups. However, the normal hearing individuals performed well at a significantly lower (better) SNR than the individuals with auditory dys-synchrony for both companded and non companded test materials.