Korean Journal of Audiology (대한청각학회지)

The Korean Audiology Society (대한청각학회)
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Effect of Speech Degradation and Listening Effort in Reverberating and Noisy Environments Given N400 Responses

  • Kyong, Jeong-Sug (Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Seoul National University Hospital) ;
  • Kwak, Chanbeom (Laboratory of Hearing and Technology, Research Institute of Audiology and Speech Pathology, College of Natural Sciences, Hallym University) ;
  • Han, Woojae (Laboratory of Hearing and Technology, Research Institute of Audiology and Speech Pathology, College of Natural Sciences, Hallym University) ;
  • Suh, Myung-Whan (Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Seoul National University Hospital) ;
  • Kim, Jinsook (Division of Speech Pathology and Audiology, College of Natural Sciences, Hallym University)
  • Received : 2019.12.26
  • Accepted : 2020.04.03
  • Published : 2020.07.20
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Abstract

Background and Objectives: In distracting listening conditions, individuals need to pay extra attention to selectively listen to the target sounds. To investigate the amount of listening effort required in reverberating and noisy backgrounds, a semantic mismatch was examined. Subjects and Methods: Electroencephalography was performed in 18 voluntary healthy participants using a 64-channel system to obtain N400 latencies. They were asked to listen to sounds and see letters in 2 reverberated×2 noisy paradigms (i.e., Q-0 ms, Q-2000 ms, 3 dB-0 ms, and 3 dB-2000 ms). With auditory-visual pairings, the participants were required to answer whether the auditory primes and letter targets did or did not match. Results: Q-0 ms revealed the shortest N400 latency, whereas the latency was significantly increased at 3 dB-2000 ms. Further, Q-2000 ms showed approximately a 47 ms delayed latency compared to 3 dB-0 ms. Interestingly, the presence of reverberation significantly increased N400 latencies. Under the distracting conditions, both noise and reverberation involved stronger frontal activation. Conclusions: The current distracting listening conditions could interrupt the semantic mismatch processing in the brain. The presence of reverberation, specifically a 2000 ms delay, necessitates additional mental effort, as evidenced in the delayed N400 latency and the involvement of the frontal sources in this study.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

This work was jointly supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2018S1A3A2074932 & NRF-2018R1A2B6004788).

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