@article {91,
	title = {Restoration of interrupted speech: What does it teach us for top-down speech repair in hearing impaired?},
	year = {2011},
	publisher = {Nederlandse Vereniging voor Fonetische Wetenschappen},
	address = {Utrecht, The Netherlands},
	abstract = {<p>Inaudible parts of speech can be perceptually restored with the help of linguistic knowledge, context, and expectations. This top-down repair mechanism, phonemic restoration, is considered to enhance speech intelligibility in noisy environments. Hearing-impaired listeners and users of cochlear implants commonly complain about not understanding speech in noise. In our research, we observe that hearing impairment and front-end processing of hearing aids and cochlear implants may reduce the benefit from restoration. Based on this observation, we hypothesize that the degradations in the bottom-up speech signals due to the hearing impairment or signal processing may have a negative effect on the top-down repair mechanism, which could partially be responsible for the complaints by this population. We test this hypothesis in a number of studies with either control groups of normal hearing (with or without simulations of hearing impairment) or with hearing-impaired participants. In this talk, I will present results from these studies. Overall findings from our laboratory imply that the degradations in the bottom-up signals alone (such as in hearing impairment) may reduce the top-down restoration of speech, even in the absence of cognitive deficits.</p>
},
	author = {Deniz Baskent}
}
