Acoustic and Perceptual Effects of WDRC Amplification

WDRC 放大的声学和感知效果

• 批准号: 9104721
• 负责人: PAMELA E. SOUZA
• 金额: $ 33.01万
• 依托单位: NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2005
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2005-03-01 至 2021-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9104721
• 关键词: Acoustics; Acute; Address; Affect; Audiometry; Auditory; Characteristics; Clinical; Communication; Complement; Complex; Cueing for speech; Cues; Data; Dependence; Development; Environment; Frequencies; Generic Drugs; Goals; Grant; Guidelines; Habits; Health; Healthcare; Hearing; Hearing Aids; Individual; Measures; Modeling; Noise; Outcome; Patients; Pattern; Performance; Prevention strategy; Process; Property; Psychoacoustics; Recommendation; Research Support; Resolution; Signal Transduction; Source; Speech; Speech Intelligibility; Speech Perception; Speed; Technology; Testing; Training; Treatment Efficacy; Universities; Work; base; behavior measurement; clinical practice; collaborative environment; evidence based guidelines; hearing impairment; improved; indexing; personalized health care; personalized medicine; preference; public health relevance; research study; response; signal processing; sound; standard of care; treatment strategy; virtual

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Health care is undergoing a major transition from generic solutions to research-supported personalized health care, which aims to develop prevention and treatment strategies directed by individual characteristics. There is an acute need for such treatment approaches in hearing health care, where hearing aids (the primary treatment for hearing loss) have had limited acceptance and uncertain individual benefits. The proposed work encompasses three sets of experiments that take a systematic approach to prescribing hearing aid signal processing customized to the listener's abilities. The first specifi aim is to describe how the listener profile determines response to hearing aid signal processing in quiet and in adverse listening environments. The focus is on the core technology decisions that must be made by clinical audiologists: the speed of the wide- dynamic range compressor; the number of compression channels; and the use of frequency lowering. The project will combine behavioral measurements and signal analysis, using an auditory model (the Spectral Correlation Index) to understand the effect of acoustic changes imposed by signal processing. It is hypothesized that listeners who rely on different aspects of the speech signal will also respond differently to specific hearing-aid signal processing, and that customizing signal processing to the listener profile will result in improved speech intelligibility compared to other signal processing options. It is also hypothesized that reduced acoustic redundancy - as will occur in reverberation and background noise - will magnify the effect of signal processing distortions. The second specific aim will relate listener profile to performance on a set of psychoacoustic measures that also test sensitivity to temporal and spectral cues. This will allow differentiation between listeners who use particular cue patterns because they cannot access others, versus as a preference or adaptation. It is hypothesized that while all listeners will demonstrate cue profiles that are not well predicted by their audiograms, listeners with poorer spectral resolution and those with severe loss will be more likely to rely on temporal cues to speech. It is anticipated that the outcome of this aim will support a refined version of the profil, including a set of clear clinical guidelines. The third specific aim is to demonstrate the consequences of profile-directed signal processing for speech perception in everyday listening and under clinical fitting conditions with wearable hearing aids. Simulated reverberant and noisy environments will be created in Northwestern's Virtual Sound Room. Speech intelligibility and quality will be compared for profile-directed and "profile-misdirected" processing, as well as standard-of-care fitting (the listeners' own aids). It is hypothesized that the relationships demonstrated in Aim 1 will be present in everyday environments and under the constraints and acoustic properties created by wearable hearing aids. Taken together, the questions addressed in this project will provide a comprehensive assessment of the effects of hearing aid processing in realistic listening environments, while considering specific abilities that affect response to signal processing.

 描述（由申请人提供）：医疗保健正在经历从通用解决方案到研究支持的个性化医疗保健的重大转变，其目的是制定针对个人特征的预防和治疗策略。听力健康领域迫切需要这种治疗方法。助听器（听力损失的主要治疗方法）的接受度有限且个人益处不确定。拟议的工作包括三组实验，这些实验采用系统方法来根据听者的能力定制助听器信号处理。描述听者配置文件如何确定在安静和不利的聆听环境中对助听器信号处理的响应，重点是临床听力学家必须做出的核心技术决策：宽动态范围压缩器的速度；压缩的数量；该项目将结合行为测量和信号分析，使用听觉模型（频谱相关指数）来了解信号处理所带来的声学变化的影响。语音信号的各个方面还将对特定助听器信号处理做出不同的响应，并且与其他助听器相比，根据收听者配置文件定制信号处理将导致语音清晰度的提高 信号处理选项的发展还表明，减少声学冗余（如混响和背景噪声中会出现的情况）将放大信号处理失真的影响，第二个具体目标是将听众的概况与一组心理声学测量的性能联系起来。对时间和频谱线索的敏感性，这将允许区分使用特定线索模式的听众，因为他们无法访问其他线索模式，而不是作为偏好或适应，而所有听众都会表现出未很好预测的线索配置文件。根据他们的听力图，频谱分辨率较差的听众和听力损失严重的听众将更有可能依赖语音的时间线索。预计这一目标的结果将支持轮廓的改进版本，包括一组清晰的临床。第三个具体目标是在西北大学的虚拟声音室中创建模拟混响和噪声环境，以证明在日常听力和临床验配条件下语音感知的轮廓定向信号处理的效果。语音清晰度和质量将通过对轮廓定向和“轮廓误导”处理以及标准护理拟合（听众自己的辅助）进行比较来证明，目标 1 中的关系将出现在其中。总而言之，该项目解决的问题将对日常环境中的助听器处理效果进行全面评估，同时考虑影响信号响应的特定能力。加工。