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，旨在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，因为助听器(听力损失的主要治疗方法)的接受度有限，个人利益也不确定。这项拟议的工作包括三组实验，这些实验采用系统的方法，根据听者的能力定制助听器信号处理。第一个具体目标是描述听者配置文件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。重点放在临床听力专家必须做出的核心技术决定上：宽动态范围压缩机的速度；压缩通道的数量；以及频率降低的使用。该项目将结合行为测量和信号分析，使用听觉模型(频谱相关指数)来了解信号处理施加的声学变化的影响。假设依赖于语音信号的不同方面的听者也将对特定助听器信号处理作出不同的响应，并且将信号处理定制到听者简档将导致与其他方面相比提高语音可理解性 信号处理选项。它还假设，减少声学冗余--就像混响和背景噪声中会发生的那样--将放大信号处理失真的影响。第二个具体目标将把听者概况与一组心理声学测量的表现联系起来，这些测量也测试对时间和光谱线索的敏感性。这将允许区分使用特定线索模式的听众，因为他们不能接触其他人，而不是作为偏好或适应。假设虽然所有的听者都会表现出他们的听力图不能很好地预测的线索轮廓，但谱分辨率较差的听者和那些严重丧失的听者将更有可能依赖于语音的时间线索。预计这一目标的结果将支持该概况的改进版本，包括一套明确的临床指南。第三个具体目标是展示在日常听力和临床配戴助听器的情况下，轮廓定向信号处理对言语感知的影响。西北大学的虚拟声音室将模拟混响和嘈杂的环境。语言的可理解性和质量将会被用来比较轮廓导向和“轮廓误导”处理，以及标准护理适配(听者自己的辅助设备)。假设在目标1中展示的关系将存在于日常环境中，并且处于可穿戴助听器所产生的约束和声学特性之下。综上所述，本项目中涉及的问题将全面评估助听器处理在现实听力环境中的效果，同时考虑影响信号处理反应的特定能力。

 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.