Recognition Score of Nasal Consonants in Babble Noise

Some environmental interventions such as multi talker babble noise can cause difficulty understanding speech. Understanding consonants is the basis for a general understanding of speech. Verbal communication usually occurs in environments where multiple speakers are talking. There are three nasal consonants in Persian language with important effect on speech perception. The aim of this study is to determine the effect of babble noise on the recognition score of stop and fricative consonants.
This cross-sectional study was performed on 48 males and females, aged between 19-24 years with normal hearing. After auditory and speech evaluation, recognition of nasal consonants in consonant vowel consonant syllable at the presence of babbling noise was tested.
By increasing the amount of noise, the recognition of nasal consonants at the beginning of the syllable reduced. There was a significant difference between recognition of nasal consonants at the beginning of the syllable with the vowel /a/in the signal to noise ratio of zero (87.5±24.18), in, -5 (80.2±24.71) and -10 (64.58±35.66) (p0.0005), /u/ (7.29±17.83) (P=0.178) in the mentioned signal to noise ratio. There was a significant difference between recognition of these consonants at the end of the syllable with the vowel /e/ (75.00±24.73) (P=0.008), /a/ (64.58±24.09) (P=0.002), /â/ (47.39±24.32) (P=0.006), /i/ (79.68±24.54) and /o/ (60.93±28.67) (P>0.0005) in the mentioned signal to noise ratio. Moreover, there was a significant difference in recognition of these consonants at the beginning of the word in the signal to noise ratio of zero between men and women (p=0.039). The women was higher than men.
Increased babble noise levels significantly reduce the recognition score of nasal consonants, and average recognition score of nasal consonants in noise related to gender in the signal to noise ratio of zero.