Enhanced environments for psychophysical evaluation and training

项目摘要 噪声测试中的语音传统上涉及1）不切实际的掩蔽物，例如呈现的宽带噪声 来自与目标语音相同的空间位置，以及2）不吸引人的奖励结构。我们的总体 一个假设是，听众在日常生活中的经验将更强烈地与性能相关，如果 通过增加测试环境的真实性和引入游戏， 比如接口。本项目的主要目标是确定哪些增强对 与听众抱怨的关系，以及听众的能力（听觉和认知）介导， 调节这种关系。增强环境将被测试，1）模拟现实世界的经验， 在包括听觉和视觉刺激的合成环境中进行评估，以及2） 引入类似游戏的元素，对听众来说更有回报和激励。了解如何 不同的参与者对各种增强功能的响应将提供有关 现实体验与传统实验室测试不同的方式，以及奖励和 动机影响测试结果的变异性以及与自我报告的关系。实验将涉及 听力正常的年轻听众，听力从正常到严重的老年听众 一组有轻度脑外伤史的听众。这些参与者将提供 在听觉和认知能力的测量方面有广泛的表现，然后可以用来更好地 了解增强对自我报告的复杂听力功能能力的任何影响 环境.在这个项目完成后，将存在，免费提供，一套广泛的增强 听觉评估比目前可用的更吸引人、更现实， 廉价的消费级设备。本项目将为这些增强测试建立1） 作为年龄和听力损失函数的正常性能的确定范围，以及2）已知的与 在噪音中进行的各种语言测试。与该项目相关的建模工作将揭示 听觉和认知能力与偏离正常表现和自我报告有关 在不利的听力环境中听力困难，比预期的要大。

Project Summary Speech in noise tests have traditionally involved 1) unrealistic maskers such as broadband noise presented from the same spatial location as the target speech, and 2) unengaging reward structures. Our overarching hypothesis is that the experience of listeners in their daily lives will be more strongly related to performance if the laboratory tests are enhanced by increasing the realism of the testing environments and introducing game- like interfaces. The main goal of this project is to determine which enhancements have the greatest impact on the relationship with listener complaints, and which listener abilities (auditory and cognitive) mediate and modulate this relationship. Enhanced environments will be tested that 1) simulate real-world experiences by conducting assessments in synthetic environments that include both auditory and visual stimuli and 2) introduce game-like elements that are more rewarding and motivating for the listener. Understanding how different participants respond to a variety of enhancements will provide essential new information about the ways in which realistic experiences differ from traditional laboratory tests and the ways that rewards and motivation influence variability of test results as well as relationships with self-report. Experiments will involve younger listeners with normal hearing, older listeners with a range of hearing abilities from normal to severely impaired, and a group of listeners with a history of mild traumatic brain injury. These participants will provide a wide range of performance on measures of auditory and cognitive abilities, which can then be used to better understand any effects of the enhancements on self-reported ability to function in complex listening environments. Upon completion of this project there will exist, freely available, an extensive set of enhanced auditory assessments that are more engaging and more realistic than what is currently available and that run on inexpensive consumer-grade equipment. This project will establish for these enhanced tests both 1) established ranges of normal performance as a function of age and hearing loss, and 2) known relationships to various established tests of speech in noise. The modeling work associated with this project will reveal which auditory and cognitive abilities are associated with deviations from normal performance and self-reported difficulties hearing in adverse listening environments that are great than would be expected.