Functional Hearing Ability within the Context of Driving

驾驶环境中的功能性听力

基本信息

批准号：
6897221
负责人：
Carryl L Baldwin
金额：
$ 6.18万
依托单位：
OLD DOMINION UNIVERSITY
依托单位国家：
美国
项目类别：
财政年份：
2004
资助国家：
美国
起止时间：
2004-06-01 至 2007-07-31
项目状态：
已结题

项目摘要

Age-related changes in hearing and cognition pose considerable challenges to older adults in real world settings. Traditional methods of assessing audiometric functioning fail to consider the attentional processing requirements inherent in everyday listening situations. Concurrently, cognitive aging research has often neglected to adequately measure and account for hearing abilities. Hearing impairment, common among older populations, necessitates the expenditure of differentially greater attentional resources for signal extraction thereby compromising performance on concurrent cognitive tasks. New in-vehicle technologies utilizing auditory guidance instructions to assist drivers with navigating through complex and unfamiliar environments have the potential to decrease the attentional demands of difficult ddving situations and thus increase the safety and mobility of older ddvers. However, failure to address the interacting affects of declining hearing abilities and attentional processing capabilities of older adults threatens the effective implementation of these new technologies. Standard methods of assessing hearing impairment (i.e., clinical audiometry) neglect the working memory demands involved in everyday auditory processing. At the same time, conventional assessments of cognitive processing often use auditory tasks but frequently do not assess hearing ability adequately. The major goal of the proposed research is to develop and validate a functional hearing assessment methodology with young, young-old and old adults to examine the impact of hearing ability on speech processing and attentional workload during multi-task performance similar to that present in many everyday situations. To achieve this goal, three experiments of multi-task performance are proposed. A speech-processing task will be combined with a simulated driving task. Experiment 1 will facilitate the establishment of a method of assessing functional hearing ability (FHA) and Experiment 2 will examine the impact of realistic environmental noise on FHA. Auditory stimuli will first be presented within a range of presentation levels including standard (60dB), attenuated and amplified presentation levels. By equating functional hearing level between the age groups, a comparison of the attentional requirements of the speech-processing task independent of hearing ability can be achieved. Results of the investigation will be utilized to develop a predictive model of the attentional requirements of auditory processing in real world multi-task situations such as driving. Experiment 3 will incorporate the results of the FHA methodology established in Experiments 1 and 2 in a realistic driving task involving utilizing auditory navigational guidance instructions to complete a wayfinding task.

与年龄相关的听力和认知变化给现实世界中的老年人带来了相当大的挑战。评估听力功能的传统方法未能考虑日常听力情况中固有的注意力处理要求。与此同时，认知衰老研究往往忽视了对听力能力的充分测量和解释。听力障碍在老年人群中很常见，需要花费更多的注意力资源来提取信号，从而影响并发认知任务的表现。新的车载技术利用听觉引导指令来帮助驾驶员在复杂和陌生的环境中导航，有可能减少困难驾驶情况下的注意力需求从而提高老年驾驶员的安全性和行动能力。然而，未能解决老年人听力能力和注意力处理能力下降的相互作用影响会威胁到这些新技术的有效实施。评估听力障碍的标准方法（即临床听力测定）忽略了日常听觉处理中涉及的工作记忆需求。与此同时，认知处理的传统评估经常使用听觉任务，但常常不能充分评估听力能力。拟议研究的主要目标是开发和验证一种针对年轻人、年轻人和老年人的功能性听力评估方法，以检查听力能力对多任务执行期间的语音处理和注意力工作量的影响，类似于许多任务中存在的情况日常情况。为了实现这一目标，提出了三个多任务性能实验。语音处理任务将与模拟驾驶任务相结合。实验1将促进建立一种评估功能性听力（FHA）的方法，实验2将检查现实环境噪声对FHA的影响。听觉刺激将首先在一系列呈现级别内呈现，包括标准（60dB）、衰减和放大呈现级别。通过使各年龄组之间的功能性听力水平相等，可以对独立于听力能力的语音处理任务的注意力要求进行比较。调查结果将用于开发现实世界多任务情况（例如驾驶）中听觉处理注意力需求的预测模型。实验 3 将实验 1 和 2 中建立的 FHA 方法的结果纳入实际驾驶任务中，其中涉及利用听觉导航引导指令完成寻路任务。