One versus two hearing aids in multitalker listening

描述(申请人提供)：听力损失听众的一个常见抱怨是在背景噪声存在的情况下理解语音。在大多数倾听的情况下，掩盖目标说话者的“噪音”是其他声音。现实环境通常有不利的收听条件，例如混响和多个声源。关于成年人是否应该在嘈杂的听力环境中使用一种或两种助听器来更好地理解言语，以前的文献报道了相互矛盾的结果，并提出双耳干扰随着年龄的增加而增加。这项拟议的研究的目标是确定在复杂的听力情况下，移除一个助听器是有助于还是阻碍语音理解。听觉感知实验将在患有感音神经性耳聋的年轻和老年成年听众中进行，以解决三个具体目标。首先，比较多人听环境中的单边放大和双侧放大。第二，考察在信息掩蔽条件下年龄对言语知觉分离的影响。第三，评估混响对多个同时说话者辅助语音理解的影响。总体而言，这些结果将对听觉学家和他们的病人有用。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): A common complaint of listeners with hearing loss is understanding speech in the presence of background noise. In most listening situations, the "noise" that masks a target talker is other voices. Realistic environments often have adverse listening conditions, such as reverberation and multiple sound sources. There are conflicting results reported in previous literature as to whether adults should use one or two hearing aids to best understand speech in noisy listening situations and it has been suggested that binaural interference increases with age. The goal of the proposed research is to determine whether removing one hearing aid helps or hinders speech understanding in complex listening situations. Auditory perceptual experiments will be conducted in younger and older adult listeners with sensorineural hearing loss to address three specific aims. First, to compare unilateral to bilateral amplification in multitalker listening environments. Second, to examine the effect of age on perceptual segregation of speech under conditions of informational masking. Third, to assess the effect of reverberation on aided speech understanding with multiple, simultaneous talkers. Overall, the results will be useful to audiologists and their patients.