Subjective criteria underlying noise-tolerance in the presence of speech

Abstract

Objective

The objective was to determine the relative contribution of four criteria (loudness, annoyance, distraction, speech interference) to participants’ noise-tolerance thresholds (NTT).

Design

While listening to speech in noise set at the highest signal-to-noise ratio at which noise became unacceptable (noise tolerance threshold), participants completed paired-comparison judgments of loudness, annoyance, distraction, and speech interference to determine the noise domain(s) that were most important in their noise tolerance judgments. Participants also completed absolute ratings of the noise using the same noise domains, which were combined with the paired comparison data for analysis.

Study Sample

Sixty-three adults with normal hearing participated.

Results

For the entire group, speech interference and distraction were the largest contributors to noise tolerance. A cluster analysis indicated three distinct groups: criteria were dominated by either annoyance (33%); distraction (48%), or speech interference (19%). Significant differences in NTT among the groups revealed the highest mean NTT for the annoyance group and lowest NTT for the speech interference group.

Conclusion

The majority of participants based NTTs on criteria related to the noise itself (annoyance or distraction) and had greater noise sensitivity than the smaller group of participants who focused more on speech intelligibility in the noise.

Keywords:

• Noise
• noise annoyance
• acceptable noise level
• noise sensitivity

Acknowedgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Arthur Boothroyd who wrote the code for the computer administration of the Noise Tolerance Domains Test.

Disclosure statement

We have no conflicts of interest to declare.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported, in part, by the National Institute of Deafness and Other Communicative Disorders under Grant #5R33DC015046.