Use of supplemental/Substitutive Aids for Hearing-Impaired

人工听力，如听觉神经的电刺激和皮肤表面触觉的机械刺激，为重度听障人士提供了利用语音的可能性。二十多年来，虽然世界上的用户数量迅速增加，但其设备功能方面的进一步改进并没有取得预期的进展。然而，对于这种改进的研究，需要通过所提出的人工听力设备收集详细的语音感知能力评价实验数据。由于此类实验需要对设备信息丰富的用户进行长时间的全面观察，因此只有在有能力的研究机构中才能获得可靠的数据。最重要的是，这种罕见的实验是用不同的语言进行的，所以结果不能直接相互比较。为了克服这一严重问题，国际上人工听力研究开发最为活跃的瑞典、奥地利、英国、美国、澳大利亚和日本的研究人员组成了该项目课题组，并在这两年的时间里通过对口国与日本的互访，探讨了国际上评价方法标准化的可能性。在详细分析人工听力设备语音处理机制特点的基础上，提出了一种将不同语言的评价实验结果相互转换的新策略，并证明了通过人工听力来确定语音感知能力的通用评价标准是可能的。

Artificial hearing, such as electrical stimulation of auditory nerves and mechanical stimulation through the tactile sensation on skin surface, introduced a possibility of utilizing speech sound to profoundly hearing -impaired people. While the numbers of users increasing rapidly in the world for more than twenty years, further improvement on functional aspects of their devices had not made progress than expected.For the research on this improvement, however, it is necessary to gather the data of detailed evaluation experiments on speech perception ability through the proposed artificial hearing devices. As such experiments require comprehensive observation of informative users of the devices over a long period, the reliable data can be obtained only in the capable research organizations. Above all, such rare experiments are being done with speech in different language of the subjects, so that the results can not be compared directly among each other.In order to overcome this serious problem, researchers in Sweden, Austria, United Kingdom, the United States, Australia and Japan, who have been most active in research and development of the artificial hearing in the world, have joined in a research group in this program, and possibility of standardizing evaluation method internationally has been investigated through the exchange visits between counterpart countries and Japan during these two years period.As the results, a new strategy of converting the results of evaluation experiments in different language mutually has been derived, based on the detailed analysis of characteristics of speech processing mechanism in the artificial hearing devices, and it has been shown to be possible to settle common evaluation criteria for speech perception ability through the artificial hearing.