One versus two hearing aids in multitalker listening

描述（由申请人提供）：听力损失的听众最常见的抱怨是在有背景噪音的情况下听不懂讲话。在大多数听力情况下，掩盖目标说话者的“噪音”是其他人的声音。现实环境往往有不利的听音条件，如混响和多个声源。关于在嘈杂的听力环境中，成年人是否应该使用一个或两个助听器来最好地理解语言，以前的文献报道的结果相互矛盾，有人认为双耳干扰随着年龄的增长而增加。这项拟议研究的目的是确定在复杂的听力情况下，移除一个助听器是有助于还是阻碍了语言理解。听觉感知实验将在有感觉神经性听力损失的年轻和老年成年听众中进行，以解决三个具体目标。首先，比较多语者听力环境下的单侧和双侧放大。其次，研究年龄对信息掩蔽条件下言语知觉分离的影响。第三，评估混响对多人同时说话的辅助语音理解的影响。总的来说，结果将是有用的听力学家和他们的病人。

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.