RESEARCH ARTICLE
The Binaural Masking-Level Difference of Mandarin Tone Detection and the Binaural Intelligibility-Level Difference of Mandarin Tone Recognition in the Presence of SpeechSpectrum Noise Cheng-Yu Ho1,2, Pei-Chun Li3*, Yuan-Chuan Chiang4, Shuenn-Tsong Young1,2, WoeiChyn Chu1* 1 Department of Biomedical Engineering, School of Biomedical Science and Engineering, National YangMing University, Taipei City, Taiwan, R.O.C, 2 Holistic Education Center, Mackay Medical College, New Taipei City, Taiwan, R.O.C, 3 Department of Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology, Mackay Medical College, New Taipei City, Taiwan, R.O.C, 4 Department of Speech and Hearing Disorders and Science, National Taipei University of Nursing and Health Sciences, Taipei City, Taiwan, R.O.C * [email protected] (PCL); [email protected] (WCC) OPEN ACCESS Citation: Ho C-Y, Li P-C, Chiang Y-C, Young S-T, Chu W-C (2015) The Binaural Masking-Level Difference of Mandarin Tone Detection and the Binaural Intelligibility-Level Difference of Mandarin Tone Recognition in the Presence of SpeechSpectrum Noise. PLoS ONE 10(4): e0120977. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0120977 Academic Editor: Ian McLoughlin, The University of Science and Technology of China, CHINA Received: August 25, 2014 Accepted: February 9, 2015 Published: April 2, 2015 Copyright: © 2015 Ho et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability Statement: All relevant data are within the paper. Funding: This work was supported by a grant from the Taiwan National Science Council (# NSC 1012220-E-715-001). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Abstract Binaural hearing involves using information relating to the differences between the signals that arrive at the two ears, and it can make it easier to detect and recognize signals in a noisy environment. This phenomenon of binaural hearing is quantified in laboratory studies as the binaural masking-level difference (BMLD). Mandarin is one of the most commonly used languages, but there are no publication values of BMLD or BILD based on Mandarin tones. Therefore, this study investigated the BMLD and BILD of Mandarin tones. The BMLDs of Mandarin tone detection were measured based on the detection threshold differences for the four tones of the voiced vowels /i/ (i.e., /i1/, /i2/, /i3/, and /i4/) and /u/ (i.e., /u1/, /u2/, /u3/, and /u4/) in the presence of speech-spectrum noise when presented interaurally in phase (S0N0) and interaurally in antiphase (SπN0). The BILDs of Mandarin tone recognition in speech-spectrum noise were determined as the differences in the target-to-masker ratio (TMR) required for 50% correct tone recognitions between the S0N0 and SπN0 conditions. The detection thresholds for the four tones of /i/ and /u/ differed significantly (p
The Binaural Masking-Level Difference of Mandarin Tone Detection and the Binaural Intelligibility-Level Difference of Mandarin Tone Recognition in the Presence of SpeechSpectrum Noise Cheng-Yu Ho1,2, Pei-Chun Li3*, Yuan-Chuan Chiang4, Shuenn-Tsong Young1,2, WoeiChyn Chu1* 1 Department of Biomedical Engineering, School of Biomedical Science and Engineering, National YangMing University, Taipei City, Taiwan, R.O.C, 2 Holistic Education Center, Mackay Medical College, New Taipei City, Taiwan, R.O.C, 3 Department of Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology, Mackay Medical College, New Taipei City, Taiwan, R.O.C, 4 Department of Speech and Hearing Disorders and Science, National Taipei University of Nursing and Health Sciences, Taipei City, Taiwan, R.O.C * [email protected] (PCL); [email protected] (WCC) OPEN ACCESS Citation: Ho C-Y, Li P-C, Chiang Y-C, Young S-T, Chu W-C (2015) The Binaural Masking-Level Difference of Mandarin Tone Detection and the Binaural Intelligibility-Level Difference of Mandarin Tone Recognition in the Presence of SpeechSpectrum Noise. PLoS ONE 10(4): e0120977. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0120977 Academic Editor: Ian McLoughlin, The University of Science and Technology of China, CHINA Received: August 25, 2014 Accepted: February 9, 2015 Published: April 2, 2015 Copyright: © 2015 Ho et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability Statement: All relevant data are within the paper. Funding: This work was supported by a grant from the Taiwan National Science Council (# NSC 1012220-E-715-001). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Abstract Binaural hearing involves using information relating to the differences between the signals that arrive at the two ears, and it can make it easier to detect and recognize signals in a noisy environment. This phenomenon of binaural hearing is quantified in laboratory studies as the binaural masking-level difference (BMLD). Mandarin is one of the most commonly used languages, but there are no publication values of BMLD or BILD based on Mandarin tones. Therefore, this study investigated the BMLD and BILD of Mandarin tones. The BMLDs of Mandarin tone detection were measured based on the detection threshold differences for the four tones of the voiced vowels /i/ (i.e., /i1/, /i2/, /i3/, and /i4/) and /u/ (i.e., /u1/, /u2/, /u3/, and /u4/) in the presence of speech-spectrum noise when presented interaurally in phase (S0N0) and interaurally in antiphase (SπN0). The BILDs of Mandarin tone recognition in speech-spectrum noise were determined as the differences in the target-to-masker ratio (TMR) required for 50% correct tone recognitions between the S0N0 and SπN0 conditions. The detection thresholds for the four tones of /i/ and /u/ differed significantly (p
