SPEECH RECOGNITION AND JUST-FOLLOW-CONVERSATION TASKS FOR NORMAL-HEAVING AND HEARING-IMPAIRED LISTENERS WITH DIFFERENT MASKERS

Speech recognition (SRT) and just-follow-conversation (JFC) tasks were performed by normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners matched fo r age and sex using three masking backgrounds: speech spectrum random noise, continuous forward speech and reversed speech. In the SRT task, the signal-to-noise (SIN) ratio for 50% correctly repeated words of s hort, 5-word, low-redundancy sentences was determined. In the JFC task , the listener adjusted the speech level until he felt he could just u nderstand what was being said. The listeners needed a higher S/N ratio for the JFC task than for the SRT task. The speech maskers gave less masking than the random noise. No difference between forward and rever sed speech was observed. The hearing-impaired listeners needed a highe r SIN ratio than the normal-hearing subjects. Correlations between res ults obtained with the SRT and the JFC techniques were significant wit h speech but not with random noise as masker. The highest correlations between pure-tone hearing thresholds at different frequencies and res ults in the SRT and JFC tests were seen at 0.5 and 1 kHz.