It has been shown that monitoring temporary threshold shift (TTS) after exposure to noise may have a predictive value for susceptibility of developing permanent noise-induced hearing loss. The aim of ...this study is to present the assumptions of the TTS predictive model after its verification in normal hearing subjects along with demonstrating the usage of this model for the purposes of public health policy.
The existing computational predictive TTS models were adapted and validated in a group of 18 bartenders exposed to noise at the workplace. The performance of adapted TTS predictive model was assessed by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis. The demonstration example of the usage of this model for estimating the risk of TTS in general unscreened population after exposure to loud music in discotheque bars or music clubs is provided.
The adapted TTS predictive model shows a satisfactory agreement in distributions of actual and predicted TTS values and good correlations between these values in examined bartenders measured at 4 kHz, and as a mean at speech frequencies (0.5-4 kHz). An optimal cut-off level for recognizing the TTS events, ca. 75% of young people (aged ca. 35 years) may experience TTS >5 dB, while <10% may exhibit TTS of 15-18 dB.
The final TTS predictive model proposed in this study needs to be validated in larger groups of subjects exposed to noise. Actual prediction of TTS episodes in general populations may become a helpful tool in creating the hearing protection public health policy. Int J Occup Med Environ Health. 2023;36(1):125-38.
People with hearing impairment find competing voices scenarios to be challenging, both with respect to switching attention from one talker to the other, as well as maintaining attention. With the ...Danish competing voices test (CVT) presented here, the dual-attention skills can be assessed. The CVT provides sentences spoken by three male and three female talkers, played in sentence pairs. The task of the listener is to repeat the target sentence from the sentence pair based on cueing either before or after playback. One potential way of assisting segregation of two talkers is to take advantage of spatial unmasking by presenting one talker per ear after application of time-frequency masks for separating the mixture. Using the CVT, this study evaluated four spatial conditions in 14 moderate-to-severely hearing-impaired listeners to establish benchmark results for this type of algorithm applied to hearing-impaired listeners. The four spatial conditions were as follows: summed (diotic), separate, the ideal ratio mask, and the ideal binary mask. The results show that the test is sensitive to the change in spatial condition. The temporal position of the cue has a large impact, as cueing the target talker before playback focuses the attention toward the target, whereas cueing after playback requires equal attention to the two talkers, which is more difficult. Furthermore, both applied ideal masks show test scores very close to the ideal separate spatial condition, suggesting that this technique is useful for future separation algorithms using estimated rather than ideal masks.
Hearing-impaired listeners are known to have difficulties not only with understanding speech in noise but also with judging source distance and movement, and these deficits are related to perceived ...handicap. It is possible that the perception of spatially dynamic sounds can be improved with hearing aids (HAs), but so far this has not been investigated. In a previous study, older hearing-impaired listeners showed poorer detectability for virtual left-right (angular) and near-far (radial) source movements due to lateral interfering sounds and reverberation, respectively. In the current study, potential ways of improving these deficits with HAs were explored. Using stimuli very similar to before, detailed acoustic analyses were carried out to examine the influence of different HA algorithms for suppressing noise and reverberation on the acoustic cues previously shown to be associated with source movement detectability. For an algorithm that combined unilateral directional microphones with binaural coherence-based noise reduction and for a bilateral beamformer with binaural cue preservation, movement-induced changes in spectral coloration, signal-to-noise ratio, and direct-to-reverberant energy ratio were greater compared with no HA processing. To evaluate these two algorithms perceptually, aided measurements of angular and radial source movement detectability were performed with 20 older hearing-impaired listeners. The analyses showed that, in the presence of concurrent interfering sounds and reverberation, the bilateral beamformer could restore source movement detectability in both spatial dimensions, whereas the other algorithm only improved detectability in the near-far dimension. Together, these results provide a basis for improving the detectability of spatially dynamic sounds with HAs.
Introduction
This study aimed to investigate the daily sound exposure of hearing aid (HA) users during the COVID-19 pandemic, with a specific focus on the impact of different governance intervention ...levels.
Methods
Modern HA technology was employed to measure and compare the sound exposure of HA users in three distinct periods: pre-pandemic, and two 14-day periods during the pandemic, corresponding to varying levels of governance interventions. The study sample comprised a total of 386 HA users in Europe during the pandemic, with daily sound exposure data collected as part of the main dataset.
Results
The results revealed that, during the pandemic, the equivalent continuous sound pressure level (SPL) experienced by HA users decreased, while the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) increased compared to the pre-pandemic period. Notably, this impact was found to be more pronounced (
p
< 0.05) when individuals were subjected to stronger governance intervention levels, characterized by lower SPL and higher SNR.
Discussion
This study highlights the changes in daily sound exposure experienced by HA users during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly influenced by the extent of governance interventions that restricted social activities. These findings emphasize the importance of considering the effects of pandemic-related governance measures on the sound environments of HA users and have implications for audiological interventions and support strategies during similar crises.
Abstract
About one-third of all recently published studies on listening effort have used at least one physiological measure, providing evidence of the popularity of such measures in listening effort ...research. However, the specific measures employed, as well as the rationales used to justify their inclusion, vary greatly between studies, leading to a literature that is fragmented and difficult to integrate. A unified approach that assesses multiple psychophysiological measures justified by a single rationale would be preferable because it would advance our understanding of listening effort. However, such an approach comes with a number of challenges, including the need to develop a clear definition of listening effort that links to specific physiological measures, customized equipment that enables the simultaneous assessment of multiple measures, awareness of problems caused by the different timescales on which the measures operate, and statistical approaches that minimize the risk of type-I error inflation. This article discusses in detail the various obstacles for combining multiple physiological measures in listening effort research and provides recommendations on how to overcome them.
Hearing aid users are challenged in listening situations with noise and especially speech-on-speech situations with two or more competing voices. Specifically, the task of attending to and ...segregating two competing voices is particularly hard, unlike for normal-hearing listeners, as shown in a small sub-experiment. In the main experiment, the competing voices benefit of a deep neural network (DNN) based stream segregation enhancement algorithm was tested on hearing-impaired listeners. A mixture of two voices was separated using a DNN and presented to the two ears as individual streams and tested for word score. Compared to the unseparated mixture, there was a 13%-point benefit from the separation, while attending to both voices. If only one output was selected as in a traditional target-masker scenario, a larger benefit of 37%-points was found. The results agreed well with objective metrics and show that for hearing-impaired listeners, DNNs have a large potential for improving stream segregation and speech intelligibility in difficult scenarios with two equally important targets without any prior selection of a primary target stream. An even higher benefit can be obtained if the user can select the preferred target via remote control.
The average fundamental frequency separation (∆
) between two competing voices has been shown to provide an important cue for target-speech intelligibility. However, some of the previous ...investigations used speech materials with linguistic properties and
characteristics that may not be typical of realistic acoustic scenarios. This study investigated to what extent the effect of ∆
generalizes to more real-life speech.
Real-life sentences and a well-controlled method for manipulating the acoustic stimuli were employed. Fifteen young normal-hearing native Danish listeners were tested in a two-competing-voices sentence recognition task at several target-to-masker ratios (TMRs) and ∆
.
Compared to previous studies that addressed the same experimental scenario with less realistic speech materials, the present results showed only a moderate effect of ∆
at negative TMRs and a negligible effect at positive TMRs. An analysis of the employed stimuli showed that a large ∆
effect on the target speech intelligibility is only observed when the competing sentences have highly synchronous
trajectories, which is typical of the artificial speech materials employed in previous studies.
Overall, the present results suggest a relatively small effect of ∆
on the intelligibility of real-life speech, as compared to previously employed artificial speech, in two-competing-sentences conditions.
Abstract
The combination of delayed sound from a digital hearing aid with direct sound through an open or vented fitting can potentially degrade the sound quality due to audible changes in timbre ...and/or perception of echo. The present study was designed to test a number of delay and high-pass combinations under worst-case (i.e. most sensitive) conditions. Eighteen normal-hearing and 18 mildly hearing-impaired subjects performed the test in a paired comparison (A/B) task. The subjects were asked to select a preferred setting with respect to sound quality. The test was set in an anechoic chamber using recorded speech, environmental sounds, and own voice. Experimental hearing aids were fitted binaurally with open domes thus providing maximum ventilation. The preference data were processed using a statistical choice model that derives a ratio-scale. The analysis indicated that in these test conditions there was no change in sound quality when varying the delay in the range 5-10 ms and that there was a preference for 2000 Hz high-pass filtering in most conditions, regardless of the hearing losses tested.
Sumario
La combinación de sonido retrasado de un auxiliar auditivo con un sonido directo a través de una adaptación ventilada potencialmente puede degradar la calidad del sonido debido a cambios auditivos en timbre y/o la percepción de eco. El presente estudio fue designado para probar un número de retrasos y combinaciones pasa alto bajo las peores condiciones (i.e. las más sensibles). Dieciocho sujetos normales y 18 con hipoacusia superficial hicieron la prueba con comparación pareada (A/B). Se les pidió a los sujetos que escogieran su condición preferida con respecto a la calidad del sonido. La prueba se llevó a cabo en una cámara anecoica utilizando lenguaje grabado, sonidos ambientales y la propia voz. Se adaptaron auxiliares auditivos experimentales en forma binaural con cúpulas abiertas para máxima ventilación. Los datos preferidos fueron procesados utilizando un modelo de selección estadístico que deriva en una escala por ratios. El análisis indicó que en estas condiciones de prueba no hubo cambios en la calidad de sonido cuando se varió el retraso en el rango de 5-10 ms y que había una preferencia por la filtración pasa-alto de 2000Hz en la mayoría de condiciones , sin importar la hipoacusia en cuestión.
This paper proposes neural networks for compensating sensorineural hearing loss. The aim of the hearing loss compensation task is to transform a speech signal to increase speech intelligibility after ...further processing by a person with a hearing impairment, which is modeled by a hearing loss model. We propose an interpretable model called dynamic processing network, which has a structure similar to band-wise dynamic compressor. The network is differentiable, and therefore allows to learn its parameters to maximize speech intelligibility. More generic models based on convolutional layers were tested as well. The performance of the tested architectures was assessed using spectro-temporal objective index (STOI) with hearing-threshold noise and hearing aid speech intelligibility (HASPI) metrics. The dynamic processing network gave a significant improvement of STOI and HASPI in comparison to popular compressive gain prescription rule Camfit. A large enough convolutional network could outperform the interpretable model with the cost of larger computational load. Finally, a combination of the dynamic processing network with convolutional neural network gave the best results in terms of STOI and HASPI.
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