Effects of Sex and Educational Level on the Recognition of Persian Stop and Fricative Consonants in Babble Noise

Document Type : Original article

Authors

1 Student Research Committee, MSc of Audiology. School of Rehabilitation, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

2 Assistant Professor of Department of Audiology, School of Rehabilitation, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

3 Instructor of Department of Audiology, School of Rehabilitation, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

4 MSc in Biostatistics, Basic Sciences Department, School of Rehabilitation, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Science, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Background and Aim: The ability to communicate verbally with others is important and has an impact on maintaining quality of life. Disturbance in speech perception in the presence of noise is a common complaint to specialists of all ages. Central auditory processing and cognitive ability are effective in speech recognition in noise. Previous studies showed that gender and education have an impact on cognitive and processing skills. Therefore, the present study examined the effect of gender and educational level on the ability to recognize the Persian stop and fricative consonants in the presence of babble noise.
Materials and Methods: The present observational and cross-sectional study was performed on 31 males and 29 females with normal hearing (31 with diploma, 21 with bachelor, and 8 with higher than bachelor educational level), aged 30-49 years, selected from available samples. After auditory and speech evaluations, recognition of stop and fricative consonants in the form of consonant-vowel-consonant syllable and in the presence of noise in signal-to-noise ratios of 0, -5, and -10 were compared.
Results: Comparison of two age groups revealed that the recognition score of fricative consonants was significant in signal-to-noise ratios of 0, -5, and -10 (p= 0.003). Also, there was a significant difference between the two age groups in terms of the recognition score of fricative consonants in the presence of some vowels in signal-to-noise ratios of 0, -5, and -10 (p= 0.001).
Conclusion: The present study showed that gender and educational level have no effect on the ability to recognize speech in the presence of babble noise; however, noise exposure reduced the recognition score of stop and fricative consonants in the presence of babble noise.

Keywords

Main Subjects


1. Katz J, Medwetsky L, Burkard RF, Hood LJ. Handbook of clinical audiology: Wolters Kluwer, Lippincott William & Wilkins; 2015. P. 61.##
2. Kerr J, Engel J, Schlesinger-Raab A, Sauer H, Hölzel D. Communication, quality of life and age: results of a 5-year prospective study in breast cancer patients. Annals of Oncology. 2003;14(3):421-7##.
3. Fogerty D, Bologna WJ, Ahlstrom JB, Dubno JR. Simultaneous and forward masking of vowels and stop consonants: Effects of age, hearing loss, and spectral shaping. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 2017;141(2):1133-43. ##
4. Lee JY, Lee JT, Heo HJ, Choi C-H, Choi SH, Lee K. Speech recognition in real-life background noise by young and middle-aged adults with normal hearing. Journal of audiology & otology. 2015;19(1):39-44. ##
5. Helfer KS, Freyman RL. Stimulus and listener factors affecting age-related changes in competing speech perception. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 2014;136(2):748-59##.
6. Halpern DF. Sex differences in cognitive abilities: Psychology press; 2000. ##
7. Corre C, Friedel M, Vousden DA, Metcalf A, Spring S, Qiu LR, et al. Separate effects of sex hormones and sex chromosomes on brain structure and function revealed by high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging and spatial navigation assessment of the Four Core Genotype mouse model. Brain Structure and Function. 2016;221(2):997-1016. ##
8. Luders E, Gaser C, Narr KL, Toga AW. Why sex matters: brain size independent differences in gray matter distributions between men and women. Journal of Neuroscience. 2009;29(45):14265-70##.
9. Pletzer B, Kronbichler M, Aichhorn M, Bergmann J, Ladurner G, Kerschbaum HH. Menstrual cycle and hormonal contraceptive use modulate human brain structure. Brain research. 2010;1348:55-62. ##
10. Hu Y, Xu Q, Li K, Zhu H, Qi R, Zhang Z, et al. Gender differences of brain glucose metabolic networks revealed by FDG-PET: evidence from a large cohort of 400 young adults. PLoS One. 2013;8(12):e83821. ##
11. Dai X-J, Gong H-H, Wang Y-X, Zhou F-Q, Min Y-J, Zhao F, et al. Gender differences in brain regional homogeneity of healthy subjects after normal sleep and after sleep deprivation: a resting-state fMRI study. Sleep medicine. 2012;13(6):720-7. ##
12. Ho AJ, Raji CA, Becker JT, Lopez OL, Kuller LH, Hua X, et al. The effects of physical activity, education, and body mass index on the aging brain. Human brain mapping. 2011;32(9):1371-82. ##
13. Chou K-H, Cheng Y, Chen I-Y, Lin C-P, Chu W-C. Sex-linked white matter microstructure of the social and analytic brain. Neuroimage. 2011;54(1):725-33. ##
14. Sowell ER, Peterson BS, Kan E, Woods RP, Yoshii J, Bansal R, et al. Sex differences in cortical thickness mapped in 176 healthy individuals between 7 and 87 years of age. Cerebral cortex. 2006;17(7):1550-60. ##
15. Nazeri A-R, Lotfi Y, Moosavi A, Zamiri F, Delfi M. Auditory processing disorders in elderly people. Rehabilitation Medicine. 2014;3(1). [In Persian].
16. Chao TK, Chen THH. Predictive model for progression of hearing loss: meta‐analysis of multi‐state outcome. Journal of evaluation in clinical practice. 2009;15(1):32-40. ##
17. Wiley TL, Chappell R, Carmichael L, Nondahl DM, Cruickshanks KJ. Changes in hearing thresholds over 10 years in older adults. Journal of the American Academy of Audiology. 2008;19(4):281-92. ##
18. Kiely KM, Gopinath B, Mitchell P, Luszcz M, Anstey KJ. Cognitive, health, and sociodemographic predictors of longitudinal decline in hearing acuity among older adults. Journals of Gerontology Series A: Biomedical Sciences and Medical Sciences. 2012;67(9):997-1003. ##
19. Cruickshanks KJ, Tweed TS, Wiley TL, Klein BE, Klein R, Chappell R, et al. The 5-year incidence and progression of hearing loss: the epidemiology of hearing loss study. Archives of Otolaryngology–Head & Neck Surgery. 2003;129(10):1041-6. ##
20. Solianik R, Brazaitis M, Skurvydas A. Sex-related differences in attention and memory. Medicina. 2016;52(6):372-7. ##
21. Humes LE. The contributions of audibility and cognitive factors to the benefit provided by amplified speech to older adults. Journal of the American Academy of Audiology. 2007;18(7):590-603. ##
22. Zaidi ZF. Gender differences in human brain: a review. The Open Anatomy Journal. 2010;2)1). ##
23. Downing K, Chan S-W, Downing W-K, Kwong T, Lam T-F. Measuring gender differences in cognitive functioning. Multicultural Education & Technology Journal. 2008;2(1):4-18. ##
24. Ingalhalikar M, Smith A, Parker D, Satterthwaite TD, Elliott MA, Ruparel K, et al. Sex differences in the structural connectome of the human brain. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 2014;111(2):823-8. ##
25. Panza F, Solfrizzi V, Logroscino G. Age-related hearing impairment—a risk factor and frailty marker for dementia and AD. Nature Reviews Neurology. 2015;11(3):166. ##
26. Murphy CF, Rabelo CM, Silagi ML, Mansur LL, Schochat E. Impact of educational level on performance on auditory processing tests. Frontiers in neuroscience. 2016;10:97. ##
27. Füllgrabe C, Moore BC, Stone MA. Age-group differences in speech identification despite matched audiometrically normal hearing: contributions from auditory temporal processing and cognition. Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience. 2015;6:347. ##
28. Nureddini SZ, Mohammadzadeh A, Ashrafi M, Tabatabai SM, Karimi LJ. Recognition of stop consonants in babble noise in normal hearing individuals. Auditory and Vestibular Research. 2015;24(1):31-7 . [In Persian]. ##
29. Omidvar S, Jafari Z, Tahaei SAA, Salehi M. Effect of continuous and interrupted noises on word recognition performance of monolinguals and bilinguals. Journal of Modern Rehabilitation. 2012;6(2):50-7. [In Persian]. ##
30. Mohammadzadeh A, Nureddini S, Sandoughdar N. Recognition Score of Nasal Consonants in Babble Noise. Journal of Paramedical Sciences & Rehabilitation. 2016;5(3):34-41. [In Persian]. ##
31. Nureddini SZ, Mohammadzadeh A, Tabatabai SM. Comparison the recognition score of stop and fricative consonants in babble noise. The Scientific Journal of Rehabilitation Medicine. 2015;4(1):133-41. [In Persian]. ##
32. Stam M, Smits C, Twisk JW, Lemke U, Festen JM, Kramer SE. Deterioration of speech recognition ability over a period of 5 years in adults ages 18 to 70 years: Results of the Dutch online speech-in-noise test. Ear and hearing. 2015;36(3):e129-e37. ##
33. Dubno JR, Lee F-S, Matthews LJ, Ahlstrom JB, Horwitz AR, Mills JH. Longitudinal changes in speech recognition in older persons. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 2008;123(1):462-75. ##
34. Calais LL, Russo ICP, Borges ACLdC. Performance of elderly in a speech in noise test. Pró-Fono Revista de Atualização Científica. 2008;20(3):147-52. ##
35. Pronk M, Deeg DJ, Festen JM, Twisk JW, Smits C, Comijs HC, et al. Decline in older persons’ ability to recognize speech in noise: the influence of demographic, health-related, environmental, and cognitive factors. Ear and hearing. 2013;34(6):722-32. ##
36. Maleki M, Jafari Z, Ashayeri H, Akbarzadeh B. Effect of Age and Sex on Temporal Resolution Threshold and Speech Recognition Score in Noise (SIN) Among Individuals with Normal Hearing. Modern Rehabilitation. 2014;8(2). [In Persian]. ##
37. Smits C, Merkus P, Houtgast T. How we do it: The Dutch functional hearing–screening tests by telephone and Internet. Clinical Otolaryngology. 2006;31(5):436-40. ##
38. Dawes P, Fortnum H, Moore DR, Emsley R, Norman P, Cruickshanks K, et al. Hearing in middle age: a population snapshot of 40–69 year olds in the UK. Ear and hearing. 2014;35(3):e44. ##
39. Mohammadzadeh A, Borna A, Safavi NM, Akbarzadeh BA. Comparison of Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test Results (Persian version) in Men and Women before Elderly. 2017 . [In Persian]. ##
40. Miller DI, Halpern DF. The new science of cognitive sex differences. Trends in cognitive sciences. 2014;18(1):37-45. ##
41. Stam M, Kostense PJ, Lemke U, Merkus P, Smit JH, Festen JM, et al. Comorbidity in adults with hearing difficulties: Which chronic medical conditions are related to hearing impairment? International journal of audiology. 2014;53(6):392-401. ##
42. de Carvalho LMA, de Miranda Gonsalez EC, Iorio MCM. Speech perception in noise in the elderly: interactions between cognitive performance, depressive symptoms, and education. Brazilian journal of otorhinolaryngology. 2017;83(2):195-200. ##
  • Receive Date: 20 June 2018
  • Revise Date: 16 July 2018
  • Accept Date: 15 September 2018
  • First Publish Date: 21 March 2019