Predicting the benefits of spatial and spectrotemporal cues

描述（由申请人提供）：在3600万听力受损的美国人中，有2100万人年龄在45岁以上，而65岁以上的人中有35-40%是听力受损的。随着人口老龄化，老年和听力受损的美国人的数量只会增加。尽管对噪音环境下的言语理解进行了数十年的研究，但对于老年听障者在多语环境中比年轻的听障者所面临的日益增加的困难，目前还没有理论解释。我们知识上的这一根本差距使我们无法在临床上解决在餐馆、工作场所和许多零售环境等社交环境中无法沟通的破坏性影响。这些影响包括残疾的自我认知增加和社会退缩。该研究项目将试图确定是否可以通过测量对空间、频谱和时间信息的敏感性来预测多语者情境下的语音感知能力。本研究提出的临床意义直接关系到

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Of the 36 million hearing-impaired Americans, 21 million are over 45 years of age, and 35-40% of persons over 65 years of age are hearing-impaired. As the population ages, the number of Americans who are both older and hearing-impaired will only increase. Despite decades of research on speech understanding in noise, there is no theoretical explanation for the increased difficulties older hearing- impaired listener have in multitalker environments as compared to their younger counterparts. This fundamental gap in our knowledge makes it impossible to address clinically the devastating effects of an inability to communicate in social environments such as restaurants, the workplace, and many retail environments. These effects include increased self-perception of handicap and social withdrawal. This research program will seek to determine whether or not speech perception ability in multitalker situations can be predicted by measuring sensitivity to spatial, spectral, ad temporal information. The clinical significance of the research proposed is related directly to the ability to predict how successful an individual listener will be in a given multitalker environment Despite the evidence that binaural hearing, sensitivity to temporal information, and sensitivity to spectral information are impaired in listeners with hearing impairment, and the fact that tests have been developed for the clinic that are intended to be sensitive to these abilities, there are very few clinical audiologists who routinely test these abilities as part of their audiometric examination. If it can be demonstrated which subset of these clinical tests are accurate predictors of speech recognition in a multitalker background, the knowledge gained will allow the clinician to more accurately predict the expected clinical benefit of a particular hearing device for a specific user in various environments. This will allow the clinician to choose and fit hearing aids more successfully and to counsel patients more effectively in terms of the benefit they should expect in various environments. Similar benefits to patient care will be obtained by providing this information to the developers of hearing aid technology and rehabilitative training programs, who could then develop specific devices and techniques to address those deficits that occur most often.