Perceived emotion in clear speech: Effect of simulated hearing loss

Previous research suggests that both young normal-hearing and older hearing-impaired listeners judge clear speech as sounding angry more often than conversational speech. Interestingly, older hearing-impaired listeners were less likely than young normal-hearing listeners to judge sentences as angry in both speaking styles, suggesting that age and/or hearing loss may play a role in judging talkers’ emotions. An acoustic cue that helps distinguish angry speech from emotionally neutral speech is increased high-frequency energy, which may be attenuated or rendered inaudible by age-related hearing loss. The present study tests the hypothesis that simulating such a hearing loss will decrease the perception of anger by young normal-hearing listeners. Sentences spoken clearly and conversationally were processed and filtered to simulate the average hearing loss of the older hearing-impaired listeners from a previous study. Young normal-hearing listeners were asked to assign each sentence to one of six categories (...