Gap Discrimination and Speech Perception in Noise

<p> The relation between discrimination of silent gaps and speech&hyphen;in&hyphen;noise perception was measured in 20 normal&hyphen;hearing listeners using speech&hyphen;shaped noise as both the gap markers and the noise source for speech testing. In the gap discrimination experiment, subjects compared silent gaps marked by 60 dB SPL 250&hyphen;ms noise bursts to standards of either 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, or 200 ms. The gap results were most similar to those reported by Abel [S. M. Abel, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 52, 519&ndash;524 (1972)] as &Delta;T/T decreased non&hyphen;monotonically with increased gap length. In a second experiment, the California Consonant Test (CCT) was administered at 50 dB HL via CD in three conditions: quiet, +10 S/N, and 0 S/N. Results from both experiments were correlated and the association between &Delta;T/T and CCT scores was generally negative. Listeners who discriminated the gaps with greater acuity typically had higher speech scores. The relation was strongest for the smaller gap standards at each S/N, or when performance for any gap duration was compared to the CCT results obtained in quiet.</p>