Timing of turn taking in conversation to assess listening effort and evaluate hearing-aid processing

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Speech is one of the most important parts of human communication and a key element of social interaction. However, for many people, the use of spoken language is a challenge. One in 10 Canadians has a speech, language or hearing impairment. This problem is exacerbated with age with 40% of those between 60 and 69 and 65% of those between 70 and 79 having some type of communication disorder. Traditionally, the difficulty hearing-impaired (HI) listeners experience when communicating in noisy environments has been attributed to reduced speech intelligibility compared to normal-hearing (NH) listeners. Thus, the field has focused on experimental paradigms that involve passive listening tests. However, conversation is a complex phenomenon involving not only speech production and perception but also the interaction and the adaptation of talkers to each other and their environment. The proposed research program aims to address this challenge by gaining new insights into the critical elements of interactive conversation. This research will investigate the timing of turn taking in conversation. To achieve the rapid turn taking that is typical of everyday conversation, talkers need to conduct three things in parallel: (1) understand the speech their partners are producing, (2) plan a speech response, and (3) predict when their partners will end their turn. Thus, when listening becomes more difficult (e.g., due to noise or a hearing loss), talkers may not be able to maintain the timing of turn taking that is typical of conversation in quiet. The proposed research has four objectives: (1) characterize the effect of noise and hearing loss on the prediction of the timing of turn ends in conversation; (2) characterize acoustic markers that can be used by hearing aids to estimate the difficulty listeners are experiencing during a conversation; (3) develop lab-based measures of listening effort during conversation; and (4) develop new hearing-aid processing evaluation paradigm based on measuring conversation. In the near-term, the results here will lead to new methods to better evaluate novel hearing-aid features and signal-processing algorithms. Further, understanding how turn-taking behaviour differs between normal-hearing and hearing-impaired talkers could be used to develop new communication strategies used in counselling. Through the combination of research results and the development of student training, the proposed research program will support the development of the next generation of hearing aids, significantly improving the quality of life for an aging population, increasing the productivity of workers retiring later in life, and making it easier for others to communicate with the one in 10 Canadians with a speech, language or hearing impairment. Finally, improving our fundamental understanding of interactive behaviour during conversation will also impact other areas, such as the development of more natural human-computer voice interaction systems.