The influence of female versus male speakers' voice on speech recognition thresholds in noise: Effects of low- and high-frequency hearing impairment

Abstract

Purpose

To investigate the effect of female versus male speakers' voice on the ability to recognize speech in noise in two groups of sensorineural hearing-impaired listeners, one group with impairment at low frequencies and the other at high frequencies.

Method

Eight participants with high-frequency hearing impairments (Hf-HI) and seven with low-frequency hearing impairments (Lf-HI) participated. Sixteen normal hearing (NH) participants served as reference. The sentences from the hearing in noise test, read by a female or a male speaker, were presented monaurally with a background noise. In an adaptive procedure, the mean speech recognition threshold, for 50% correctly recognized sentences, was calculated for the female and male voice and each test subject.

Results

The Hf-HI group had significantly greater difference in signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) results between female and male voices. Irrespective of hearing impairment, the female voice required 2.1 dB better SNR. In addition, the NH group showed a small but significant difference in favor of the male voice.

Conclusions

Results indicate that speaker gender matters for hearing impaired and NH individuals' ability to recognize speech in noise.

Keywords:

• Fundamental frequency
• Hearing impairment
• Speech in noise
• Hearing in noise test
• Speech recognition threshold