1. health and fitness
2. disease
3. deafness

Fabricating Reality Through Language
Ken W. Grant – 17 April 2015
USUHS
Disclaimer
The views expressed in this presentation are those of the
presenters and do not reflect the official policy of the
Department of Navy, Department of Defense, or U.S.
Government.
Fabricating Reality Through Language
“…..Trying to make sense out of incomplete messages.”
Zebras have black and white ______.
Did you eat yet?
Making Sense From Incomplete Messages
4
DRESS
STRESS
STRESS
DRESS
DRESS
STRESS
Thought and Language
From Thinking and Speech (1934).
Publisher: M.I.T. Press, 1962;.
Translated: Edited and translated in part by
Eugenia Hanfmann and Gertrude Vakar, and
in part by Norris Minnick. Revised by Alex
Kozulin, 1966 (M.I.T. Press).
14
Speech – Just as Variable
Babies Can Do It
16
Washoe (1965-2007) –
Chimps Can Do It
17
Stages of Speech Processing
18
Auditory Speech Recognition in Noise
Percent Correct Recognition
100
90
NH – Auditory Sentences
80
70
HI-Auditory Sentences
60
ASR Sentences
50
40
30
20
10
0
-15
-10 -5
0
5
10 15
Speech-to-Noise Ratio (dB)
20
Roughly 13 dB SNR Loss with low-context sentences comparing HI
subjects to NH subjects. Automatic speech recognition more closely
resembles HI performance: requires a very favorable SNR to reach
100% and falls off quickly in noise
You Don’t Have To Have A
Hearing Loss To Having Trouble
Understanding Speech
• Not all noise exposures lead to hearing loss as
defined by the audiogram
• Common noise sources
• Concerts
• Firing range
• Leaf blowers
• Usually after 24-48 hours, hearing thresholds return
to normal
20
Listening Experience Can Modify
the Way We Hear
• Musicians versus non-musicians
encode acoustic features differently
(pitch, timing, and timbre) – better
speech recognition performance in
noise
• cABR is a brainstem response to a
complex waveform (/da/)
• cABR waveform, possibly generated in
the inferior colliculus, is modified by
experience
• cABR is modulated by past experience
N Kraus, S Anderson (2014).
Hearing Review, August, 18-21
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Everyday Environments Require
Segregation of Sound Sources and Attention
• Multiple speakers
• Auditory cues to
separate sound
sources
• Focus attention
on the target
speaker
• What happens in
the brain that
allows us to do
this?
Our wonderful colleagues at BU
22
Processing Speed, working memory,
attention and Continuous Speech
00
0.5
1.0
1.5
2.0
2.5
3.0
3.5
4.0
4.35
Time (sec)
Memory encoding and rehearsal
Time points of recognition
–
Processing words in connected speech
requires a minimum processing speed (must
handle roughly 220 words/min)
–
Words are usually recognized before end of
word occurs (lexical context)
–
Time after recognition point and before next
word starts can be used to store words in
memory, rehearse previously stored words,
activate next most likely lexical items
23
Processing Speech in Real Time: An
Example of Sequence Buffering
• What happens when the next word comes
before the previous word was fully processed
(noise, hearing loss)?
– Abort processing of current word or delay
processing of incoming word
– Error rates increase (little is known about the
kinds of errors made in this situation
• Nonsense syllable tests typically do not have
this dependence on processing time
24
Communication Breakdown
• Hearing loss
• Signal distortion (with
or without hearing loss)
• Listening history
• Attention
• Memory
• Processing speed
• Source separation
–
–
–
–
Pitch
Timbre
Spatial separation
Timing
25
A New Challenge: Blast-Exposed Normal
Hearing Service Members
• Clinically normal
hearing thresholds
• Trouble understanding
speech in complex
environments
• Effortful listening
• Tired
• Depression
• Isolation
• Distortion?
• Auditory processing?
• Cognitive processing?
• Assessments
• Low-gain hearing aids
• Brain exercises
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• Prevalence – just how big is this problem
– Need to know how many resources to devote to the
problem
• Assess the communication breakdown from several
simultaneous angles
– Early processing stages
– Central processing; binaural integration
– Cognitive processes
• Recommend course of action – brain fitness
27
• Things we know
– Audiogram doesn’t
explain difficulties in
speech understanding
– Problem requires a
multi-pronged attack
• Hidden hearing loss –
distortion
• Central processing
• Cognitive processing
• Things we’re nor sure of
– How big a problem is
this really (initial
estimates suggest up to
20% of all deployed to
Iraq and Afghanistan
– Can training regimens be
optimized if we target
the stages of processing
where the breakdown
occurs
28
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