DEVELOPMENT OF FUNCTIONAL SPATIAL HEARING IN REVERBERATION

混响中功能性空间听力的发展

• 批准号: 10515265
• 负责人: ZHAO ELLEN PENG
• 金额: $ 20.26万
• 依托单位: FATHER FLANAGAN'S BOYS' HOME
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-07-01 至 2025-06-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10515265
• 关键词: 12 year old; 18 year old; 5 year old; 9 year old; Address; Adult; Affect; Age; Area; Auditory; Auditory Perception; Benchmarking; Bilateral; Binaural; Child; Cochlear Implants; Complex; Cueing for speech; Cues; Data; Development; Devices; Environment; Foundations; Goals; Hearing; Hearing Aids; Image; Impairment; Intervention; Knowledge; Learning; Life; Maps; Measures; National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders; Outcome; Outcome Measure; Pattern; Perception; Performance; Process; Psychophysics; Role; School-Age Population; Severities; Signal Transduction; Size Perception; Social Interaction; Source; Speech; Speech Perception; Surface; Testing; Time; Width; Work; auditory processing; base; educational atmosphere; hearing impairment; improved; innovation; noise perception; normal hearing; novel; object perception; precedence effect; prevent; school environment; skills; sound; speech in noise; virtual; virtual reality

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Adverse auditory environments in indoor spaces present constant challenges to children during everyday learning and social interactions. Spatial hearing provides access to auditory cues that promote auditory and speech perception in these difficult listening situations. However, auditory spatial cues are distorted in most indoor spaces due to reverberation—the excessive sound energy reflected from room surfaces arriving at the listener shortly after the initial sound directly from the source. The perceptual consequences of reverberation on spatial hearing have not been characterized in children with normal hearing, leaving a critical gap in our knowledge of benchmark abilities to assess hearing device fitting outcomes for children with hearing loss during real-world listening. In the proposed work, our goal is to reveal the developmental trajectories of functional spatial hearing abilities under realistic reverberation between 6- to 18-year-old children. This age range reflects the protracted development of perceptual abilities, which underlies a multitude of immaturities in children’s processing of auditory information particularly in difficult listening situations. This work takes an innovative and unprecedented approach to study the impact of reverberation in auditory virtual reality, in which realistic auditory environments mimicking children’s learning environments are simulated to maximize ecological validity. Across the specific aims, we examine three aspects of functional spatial hearing abilities under virtual reverberant environments that vary in interaural coherence—a metric that describes reverberation severity. In Aim 1, we will investigate developmental changes in apparent source width—a measure of perceived auditory object size that is critical for auditory scene analysis. In Aim 2, we will investigate the development of minimum audible angle, the smallest detectable angular separation between two sounds—a well-tested metric for auditory spatial acuity. In Aim 3, we will investigate developmental changes in minimum angular separation—a novel measure of spatial unmasking based on the smallest spatial separation required to receive a target speech benefit in competing babbles. By correlating the three outcome measures from the independent aims, we will assess the inter-relationships between auditory object perception, spatial acuity, and spatial unmasking in reverberant environments among school-aged children. Findings from the proposed work will (i) establish our understanding of typical developmental trajectories of functional spatial hearing in realistic reverberant environments, and (ii) elucidate the role of auditory object perception in spatial acuity and subsequently spatial unmasking in children. Together, this work will provide intervention benchmark to assess fitting outcomes for children with hearing loss, and will generate substantial feasibility and pilot data for a planned R01 to develop fitting strategies for children with hearing devices.

项目概要/摘要 室内空间中不良的听觉环境给儿童的日常生活带来持续的挑战 学习和社交互动。空间听觉提供了对听觉线索的访问，从而促进听觉和听觉 在这些困难的听力情况下的言语感知。然而，听觉空间线索在大多数情况下都是扭曲的。 由于混响而导致的室内空间——从房间表面反射的过多声能到达 直接从源头发出初始声音后不久的听众。混响的感知后果 听力正常的儿童的空间听力尚未得到表征，这在我们的认知能力方面留下了重大空白 了解评估听力损失儿童助听器验配结果的基准能力 真实世界的聆听。 在拟议的工作中，我们的目标是揭示功能性空间听力能力的发展轨迹 6至18岁儿童之间的现实回响。这个年龄段反映了长期的 知觉能力的发展，这是儿童处理信息过程中许多不成熟的基础 听觉信息，尤其是在听力困难的情况下。这项工作需要创新和前所未有的 研究听觉虚拟现实中混响影响的方法，其中真实的听觉环境 模拟儿童的学习环境，以最大限度地提高生态有效性。 在具体目标中，我们研究了虚拟环境下功能性空间听力能力的三个方面 耳间相干性不同的混响环境——描述混响严重程度的指标。在 目标 1，我们将研究表观声源宽度的发展变化——感知听觉的衡量标准 对象大小对于听觉场景分析至关重要。在目标 2 中，我们将研究最小化的发展 可听角度，两个声音之间的最小可检测角度间隔——经过充分测试的听觉指标 空间敏锐度。在目标 3 中，我们将研究最小角间距的发展变化——一种新颖的方法 基于接收目标语音所需的最小空间间隔的空间去掩蔽测量 在相互竞争的胡言乱语中获益。通过关联独立目标的三个结果指标，我们将 评估听觉对象感知、空间敏锐度和空间揭示之间的相互关系 学龄儿童的混响环境。 拟议工作的结果将（i）建立我们对典型发展轨迹的理解 现实混响环境中的功能性空间听觉，以及 (ii) 阐明听觉对象的作用 儿童的空间敏锐度感知以及随后的空间揭露。这项工作将共同提供 评估听力损失儿童的适配结果的干预基准，并将产生大量 计划 R01 的可行性和试点数据，为佩戴助听器的儿童制定验配策略。