Acoustic and Perceptual Effects of WDRC Amplification

 描述（由申请人提供）：医疗保健正在经历从通用解决方案到研究支持的个性化医疗保健的重大转变，其目的是根据个人特征制定预防和治疗策略。在听力保健中迫切需要这种治疗方法，其中助听器（听力损失的主要治疗方法）的接受程度有限，并且不确定的个人利益。拟议的工作包括三组实验，采取系统的方法来规定助听器信号处理定制的听众的能力。第一个具体目标是描述收听者简档如何确定在安静和不利的收听环境中对助听器信号处理的响应。重点是临床听力学家必须做出的核心技术决策：宽动态范围压缩器的速度;压缩通道的数量;以及降频的使用。该项目将结合联合收割机的行为测量和信号分析，使用听觉模型（频谱相关指数），以了解信号处理造成的声学变化的影响。假设依赖于语音信号的不同方面的收听者也将不同地响应于特定助听器信号处理，并且与其他助听器相比，针对收听者简档定制信号处理将导致改善的语音可懂度。 信号处理选项。还假设减少的声学冗余-如将在混响和背景噪声中发生的-将放大信号处理失真的影响。第二个具体目标将涉及听众的个人资料的性能上的一套心理声学措施，也测试灵敏度的时间和频谱线索。这将允许区分使用特定提示模式的听众，因为他们无法访问其他人，而不是作为偏好或适应。据推测，虽然所有的听众将展示线索配置文件，没有很好地预测他们的听力图，听众与较差的频谱分辨率和那些严重损失将更有可能依赖于时间线索的讲话。预计这一目标的结果将支持一个完善的版本，包括一套明确的临床指南。第三个具体目标是证明在日常听力和佩戴助听器的临床验配条件下，轮廓定向信号处理对语音感知的影响。模拟混响和嘈杂的环境将在西北的虚拟声音室创建。语音清晰度和质量将进行比较，为配置文件导向和“配置文件误导”处理，以及标准的护理拟合（听众自己的援助）。假设目标1中所展示的关系将存在于日常环境中，并且在可穿戴助听器所产生的约束和声学特性下。总的来说，本项目中解决的问题将全面评估助听器处理在现实听音环境中的效果，同时考虑影响信号处理响应的特定能力。

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Health care is undergoing a major transition from generic solutions to research-supported personalized health care, which aims to develop prevention and treatment strategies directed by individual characteristics. There is an acute need for such treatment approaches in hearing health care, where hearing aids (the primary treatment for hearing loss) have had limited acceptance and uncertain individual benefits. The proposed work encompasses three sets of experiments that take a systematic approach to prescribing hearing aid signal processing customized to the listener's abilities. The first specifi aim is to describe how the listener profile determines response to hearing aid signal processing in quiet and in adverse listening environments. The focus is on the core technology decisions that must be made by clinical audiologists: the speed of the wide- dynamic range compressor; the number of compression channels; and the use of frequency lowering. The project will combine behavioral measurements and signal analysis, using an auditory model (the Spectral Correlation Index) to understand the effect of acoustic changes imposed by signal processing. It is hypothesized that listeners who rely on different aspects of the speech signal will also respond differently to specific hearing-aid signal processing, and that customizing signal processing to the listener profile will result in improved speech intelligibility compared to other signal processing options. It is also hypothesized that reduced acoustic redundancy - as will occur in reverberation and background noise - will magnify the effect of signal processing distortions. The second specific aim will relate listener profile to performance on a set of psychoacoustic measures that also test sensitivity to temporal and spectral cues. This will allow differentiation between listeners who use particular cue patterns because they cannot access others, versus as a preference or adaptation. It is hypothesized that while all listeners will demonstrate cue profiles that are not well predicted by their audiograms, listeners with poorer spectral resolution and those with severe loss will be more likely to rely on temporal cues to speech. It is anticipated that the outcome of this aim will support a refined version of the profil, including a set of clear clinical guidelines. The third specific aim is to demonstrate the consequences of profile-directed signal processing for speech perception in everyday listening and under clinical fitting conditions with wearable hearing aids. Simulated reverberant and noisy environments will be created in Northwestern's Virtual Sound Room. Speech intelligibility and quality will be compared for profile-directed and "profile-misdirected" processing, as well as standard-of-care fitting (the listeners' own aids). It is hypothesized that the relationships demonstrated in Aim 1 will be present in everyday environments and under the constraints and acoustic properties created by wearable hearing aids. Taken together, the questions addressed in this project will provide a comprehensive assessment of the effects of hearing aid processing in realistic listening environments, while considering specific abilities that affect response to signal processing.