One versus two hearing aids in multitalker listening

描述（由申请人提供）：听力损失听众的一个常见抱怨是在背景噪音存在下理解语音。在大多数听力情况下，掩盖目标说话者的“噪音”是其他声音。现实环境通常具有不利的收听条件，例如混响和多个声源。在以前的文献中，关于成年人是否应该使用一个或两个助听器来最好地理解嘈杂的听力环境中的讲话，有相互矛盾的结果报告，并且有人认为双耳干扰随着年龄的增长而增加。这项研究的目的是确定在复杂的听力情况下，移除一个助听器是否有助于或阻碍言语理解。听觉感知实验将在年轻和老年感音神经性听力损失的成年听众中进行，以解决三个具体目标。首先，比较多人听音环境中的单边和双边放大。第二，在信息掩蔽条件下考察年龄对言语知觉分离的影响。第三，评估混响对多个同时讲话者的辅助语音理解的影响。总的来说，这些结果将对听力学家和他们的病人有用。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): A common complaint of listeners with hearing loss is understanding speech in the presence of background noise. In most listening situations, the "noise" that masks a target talker is other voices. Realistic environments often have adverse listening conditions, such as reverberation and multiple sound sources. There are conflicting results reported in previous literature as to whether adults should use one or two hearing aids to best understand speech in noisy listening situations and it has been suggested that binaural interference increases with age. The goal of the proposed research is to determine whether removing one hearing aid helps or hinders speech understanding in complex listening situations. Auditory perceptual experiments will be conducted in younger and older adult listeners with sensorineural hearing loss to address three specific aims. First, to compare unilateral to bilateral amplification in multitalker listening environments. Second, to examine the effect of age on perceptual segregation of speech under conditions of informational masking. Third, to assess the effect of reverberation on aided speech understanding with multiple, simultaneous talkers. Overall, the results will be useful to audiologists and their patients.