German Research Foundation approves interdisciplinary project involving physics and linguistics

"Maria has just learnt that even she is entitled to money" - this "wooden path sentence" may be acoustically easy to understand and therefore more or less well received in the brain by normal and hard of hearing people. However, before "the penny drops" and the content becomes clear to the listener, a whole series of speech processing steps must first be carried out in the brain.

The precise recording of these central speech processing procedures is the subject of (psycho-) linguistics, while audiology typically measures the acoustic perceptibility of speech elements - two sides of the same coin, so to speak. But to what extent do the two sides actually influence each other in people with normal and impaired hearing? Can the effect of audiologically proven hearing loss also be proven for the central speech processing processes?

An interdisciplinary research team led by Prof Cornelia Hamann (English Studies), Prof Esther Ruigendijk (Dutch Studies), Prof Birger Kollmeier and Dr Thomas Brand (Physics/Audiology) will be joining forces over the next three years to tackle these and other questions at the interface between audiology and linguistics. The German Research Foundation is supporting this project for three years with a total of around 500,000 euros. "

The perspective of psycho-linguistics, which is quite unusual for us physicists, provides us with valuable information on how speech tests in audiology should be carried out better in the future," says Prof Kollmeier, explaining the hoped-for benefits of the project for patients with hearing loss. "Among other things, we want to use the registration of eye movements to be there online when the "penny drops" in speech comprehension." The researchers are also using a simulated acoustic hell in the communication acoustics simulator in The Haus des Hörens.

"Of particular interest is the influence of a 'difficult' acoustic situation on speech comprehension performance," comments Dr Brand on this project. Junior Professor Ruigendijk was able to reap a very special kind of advance praise for this project: On 6 November 2007, she was awarded the Lower Saxony Science Prize in Hanover for her commitment to research and teaching - congratulations!