Speaker
Description
Speech production is continuously adjusted by auditory and somatosensory feedback loops, allowing speakers to monitor and adapt their vocal output based on multimodal sensory input. In hearing-impaired speakers, a degraded auditory feedback loop results in altered supra-segmental characteristics, such as increased vocal intensity, slower articulation rates, and elevated fundamental frequency. The importance of auditory feedback is revealed by the effects of hearing aid (HA) amplification, which partially mitigates these speech alterations. However, HA amplification doesn’t form a homogeneous effect as gain is computed for individual hearing thresholds and some elements of amplified own speech remains below these thresholds.This study investigates the quantitative relationship between the amount of gain provided by hearing aid amplification and changes in supra-segmental acoustic features in 20 adult HA users with post-lingual, moderate-to-severe hearing loss. Acoustic features were extracted from speech recorded during various tasks, including reading, picture description, and spontaneous speech. Changes in the acoustic characteristics of the speaker's own voice during HA use were quantified via probe-tube measurements and percentile analysis. The complex effects of amplification on speech production are discussed within the context of multimodal feedback, suggesting that auditory rehabilitation can partially compensate for sensory deficits for speech production by hearing-impaired talkers.