Beskrivelse
Hearing-impaired listeners often experience challenges with following conversations in complex auditory environments. Factors such as reverberation, the number of concurrent talkers, and their spatial proximity contribute to these difficulties. Modern hearing aids use beamforming technology to enhance speech intelligibility in such environments, but their effectiveness can diminish with changes in target talker location or during head movements. In this study, we investigated the search strategies of normal-hearing (NH) and hearing-impaired (HI) participants (N = 2 x 20) as they attempted to identify a conversation topic in audio-visual multi-talker scenes. The scenes were simulated using a 64-channel loudspeaker array and virtual-reality glasses. The target talker’s location, the number of competing talkers, and their spatial separation were varied. Testing was conducted without hearing aids and with hearing aids set to omnidirectional or directional microphone modes. For audibility compensation, NAL-NL2 gains were prescribed and verified using real-ear measurements. Outcome measures included localization accuracy, response times, and head- and eye-movement trajectories during the task. Data collection and analyses are currently ongoing. We anticipate that, for both groups, more simultaneous talkers and closer talker spacings will lead to longer response times, reduced localization accuracy, and more complex search behaviors. We also expect that, on average, the NH group will perform the task more quickly and accurately than the HI group. Of particular interest is how directional microphone settings affect the different outcome measures compared to omnidirectional settings. Overall, our findings aim to shed light on the strategies of hearing-aid users in terms of identifying and localizing speech in multi-talker audio-visual environments.| Periode | 19. aug. 2024 → 25. aug. 2024 |
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| Begivenhedstitel | International Hearing-Aid Seminar & International Hearing-Aid Research Conference |
| Begivenhedstype | Konference |
| Placering | Lake Tahoe, USA, CaliforniaVis på kort |
| Grad af anerkendelse | International |