The Influence of Noise Reduction on Speech Intelligibility, Response Times to Speech, and Perceived Listening Effort in Normal-Hearing Listeners.
Single-microphone noise reduction leads to subjective benefit, but not to objective improvements in speech intelligibility. We investigated whether response times (RTs) provide an objective measure of the benefit of noise reduction and whether the effect of noise reduction is reflected in rated listening effort. Twelve normal-hearing participants listened to digit triplets that were either unprocessed or processed with one of two noise-reduction algorithms: an ideal binary mask (IBM) and a more realistic minimum mean square error estimator (MMSE). For each of these three processing conditions, we measured (a) speech intelligibility, (b) RTs on two different tasks (identification of the last digit and arithmetic summation of the first and last digit), and (c) subjective listening effort ratings. All measurements were performed at four signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs): -5, 0, +5, and +∞ dB. Speech intelligibility was high (>97% correct) for all conditions. A significant decrease in response time, relative to the unprocessed condition, was found for both IBM and MMSE for the arithmetic but not the identification task. Listening effort ratings were significantly lower for IBM than for MMSE and unprocessed speech in noise. We conclude that RT for an arithmetic task can provide an objective measure of the benefit of noise reduction. For young normal-hearing listeners, both ideal and realistic noise reduction can reduce RTs at SNRs where speech intelligibility is close to 100%. Ideal noise reduction can also reduce perceived listening effort.
['van den Tillaart-Haverkate|Maj|M|', 'de Ronde-Brons|Inge|I|', 'Dreschler|Wouter A|WA|', 'Houben|Rolph|R|']
D000161:Acoustic Stimulation D000162:Acoustics D000328:Adult D000465:Algorithms D001288:Attention D001301:Audiometry, Pure-Tone D001302:Audiometry, Speech D001309:Auditory Threshold D005260:Female D006309:Hearing D006801:Humans D008297:Male D009622:Noise D010470:Perceptual Masking D011930:Reaction Time D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted D013018:Sound Spectrography D013065:Speech Intelligibility D013067:Speech Perception D013997:Time Factors D055815:Young Adult
noise reduction response time listening effort speech in noise speech perception