Speech Recognition in Noise by Children with Hearing Loss as a Function of Signal-to-Noise Ratio

As part of a larger study, the speech recognition in continuous and interrupted noise was measured for ten children with moderate-to-severe sensorineural hearing loss (HL), ages 6 to 16 years, at varying signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). Children with bilateral amplification received 10 sentences at each of six SNRs with the 60 dBA noise at 180 degrees azimuth and the speech at 0 degrees azimuth. Sentences were randomly selected from a corpus of 1500 sentences taken from seven thematic categories. The continuous and interrupted speech-shaped noise was filtered to match the long-term average spectrum of the sentences. The average performance-intensity (PI) functions for the interrupted and continuous noise conditions were not significantly different. Children with HL received limited benefit from the interruptions in the noise and therefore might benefit from auditory training designed to take advantage of the silent intervals in noise. Based on the average PI function, an appropriate SNR to begin auditory training would be 6 dB

The Human Affectome

Over the last decades, the interdisciplinary field of the affective sciences has seen proliferation rather than integration of theoretical perspectives. This is due to differences in metaphysical and mechanistic assumptions about human affective phenomena (what they are and how they work) which, shaped by academic motivations and values, have determined the affective constructs and operationalizations. An assumption on the purpose of affective phenomenacan be used as a teleological principle to guide the construction of a common set of metaphysical and mechanistic assumptions—a framework for human affective research. In this capstone paper for the special issue “Towards an Integrated Understanding of the Human Affectome”, we gather the tiered purpose of human affective phenomena to synthesize assumptions that account for human affective phenomenacollectively. This teleologically-grounded framework offers a principled agenda and launchpad for both organizing existing perspectives and generating new ones. Ultimately, we hope Human Affectome brings us a step closer to not only an integrated understanding of human affective phenomena, but an integrated field for affective research