Hearing aid noise reduction algorithms and the acquisition of novel speech contrasts by young children/Algorithmes de reduction du bruit dans les appareils auditifs et acquisition de contrastes nouveaux de la parole chez les jeunes enfants

A previous study by the authors concluded that digital noise reduction (DNR) does not have an influence on the acquisition of a second language in adults. On the basis of results from adult subjects, it was inferred that DNR is not likely to influence language acquisition in pre-verbal infants. The present study serves as an update to determine whether the tasks being modeled could be conducted with younger participants of 4- and 5-years of age, and whether similar results would be found. Two groups of normal-hearing, monolingual English-speaking children were presented with noise-embedded Hindi speech contrasts that were difficult to discriminate. One group listened to both speech items and noise processed with DNR while the other group listened to unprocessed speech in noise. To ensure task appropriateness, these results were also compared to measures from a third group composed of Hindi-speaking children of the same age. Results indicated that Hindi-speaking children performed better than English-speaking children, confirming age-appropriateness of the cross-language task, but that DNR did not enhance nor impair the acquisition of novel speech contrasts by young listeners. Une etude precedente des memes auteurs a mene a la conclusion que la reduction du bruit numerique n'a pas d'influence sur l'acquisition d'une langue seconde chez les adultes. A partir de resultats obtenus aupres de sujets adultes, on a postule que la reduction du bruit numerique n'etait pas susceptible d'influencer l'acquisition d'une langue chez les jeunes enfants a l'etape preverbale. La presente etude se veut un suivi pour determiner si les taches demontrees pourraient servir avec de jeunes participants de 4 et 5 ans et si l'on arriverait a des resultats semblables. Dans le bruit, on a presente a deux groupes d'enfants monolingues anglophones ayant une acuite auditive normale des sons opposes en hindi difficiles a distinguer. Un groupe a ecoute les deux sons et le bruit transformes avec la reduction du bruit numerique, tandis que l'autre groupe a entendu les sons sans transformation. Pour assurer la pertinence de la tache, on a aussi compare les resultats a des mesures d'un troisieme groupe d'enfants parlant le hindi et ayant le meme age. Les resultats montrent que les enfants parlant le hindi ont mieux reussi que les enfants anglophones, ce qui confirme la pertinence de la tache inter-linguistique pour l'age, mais la reduction du bruit numerique n'a pas ameliore ni freine l'acquis