Effects of Training on Naïve Listeners' Judgments of the Speech Intelligibility of Children With Severe-to-Profound Hearing Loss

Abstract

Purpose This study examined the effects of feedback training, familiarization training, and no training on naïve listeners' word identification (WI) and magnitude estimation scaling (MES) judgments of the speech intelligibility of children with severe-to-profound hearing impairments. Method Depending on the training group, listeners received a pretest, an immediate posttest, and/or a delayed posttest. Results Results indicated that repeated exposure, with or without training, led to improved WI scores. Beyond the effects of repeated exposure, listeners' WI judgments of the intelligibility of speech significantly increased immediately after training in which listeners received feedback regarding the accuracy of their WI responses. The MES results were less straightforward—listeners in the feedback group perceived speech samples as less intelligible after the training, perceptions of speech intelligibility stayed almost the same for the familiarization training group, and participants in the control group perceived speech samples as more intelligible at the posttest. For the training groups that were not pretested, perceptions improved from the immediate to delayed posttest. Discussion Results may have both theoretical and clinical significance, particularly as they relate to contrasting theories of perceptual learning and the extent to which listener characteristics may be reflected in intelligibility judgments.