10.24425/aoa.2019.129726
The Benefit of Binaural Hearing Among Listeners with Sensorineural Hearing Loss
Measurements were performed with a control group of normal-hearing listeners and a group of sensorineural hearing-impaired subjects. In all conditions performance of the hearing-impaired listeners was significantly lower than normal-hearing ones, resulting in higher SRT values (3 dB difference in the S0N0 configuration, 7.6 dB in S0N90 and 5 dB in monaural S0N90). The SRT improvement due to the spatial separation of target and masking signal (ILD) was also higher in the control group (8.1 dB) than in hearing-impaired listeners (3.5 dB). Moreover, a significant deterioration of the binaural processing described by BILD was found in people with sensorineural deficits. This parameter for normal-hearing listeners reached a value of 3 to 6 dB (4.6 dB on average) and decreased more than two times in the hearing-impaired group to 1.9 dB on average (with a deviation of 1.4 dB). These findings could not be explained by individual average hearing threshold (standard in audiological diagnostics) only. The outcomes indicate that there is a contribution of suprathershold deficits and it may be useful to consider binaural SRT measurements in noise in addition to the pure tone audiometry resulting in better diagnostics and hearing aid fitting.
Copyright © The Author(s). This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0).
References
Algazi V.R., Duda R.O., Thompson D.M., Avendano C. (2001), The CIPIC HRTF Database, [in:] Proceedings of the 2001 IEEE Workshop on Applications of Signal Processing to Audio and Electroacoustics, pp. 99–102, doi: 10.1109/ASPAA.2001.969552.
ASHA (n.d.), Sensorineural hearing loss, American Speech-Language-Hearning Association, https://www.asha.org/public/hearing/sensorineural-hearing-loss/ [accessed on: 15 April 2019].
Beutelmann R., Brand T., Kollmeier B. (2010), Revision, extension, and evaluation of a binaural speech intelligibility model, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 127, 4, 2479–2497, https://doi.org/10.1121/1.3295575.
BIAP (1996), BIAP Recommendation 02/1: Audiometric Classification of Hearing Impairments, International Bureau of Audiophonology, Available online: http://www.biap.org/es/recommandations/recommendations/tc-02-classification/213-rec-02-1-en-audiometric-classification-of-hearing-impairments/file [accessed on: 8 March 2019].
Billings C.J., Madsen B.M. (2018), A perspective on brain-behavior relationships and effects of age and hearing using speech-in-noise stimuli, Hearing Research, 369, 90–102, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heares.2018.03.024.
Bronkhorst A.W. (2000), The cocktail party phenomenon: A review of research on speech intelligibility in multiple-talker conditions, Acta Acoustica united with Acoustica, 86, 1, 117–128.
Bronkhorst A.W., Plomp R. (1988), The effect of head-induced interaural time and level differences on speech intelligibility in noise, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 83, 4, 1508–1516, https://doi.org/10.1121/1.395906.
Bronkhorst A.W., Plomp R. (1989), Binaural speech intelligibility in noise for hearing-impaired listeners, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 86, 4, 1374–1383, http://dx.doi.org/10.1121/1.398697.
Demenko G. (2011), Speech perception in outline [in Polish: Percepcja mowy w zarysie], [in:] Selected problems of speech audiometry [in Polish: Wybrane zagadnienia z audiometrii mowy], A. Obrębowski [Ed.], pp. 33–57, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UM w Poznaniu, Poznań.
Durlach N. (2003), Informational masking: Counteracting the effects of stimulus uncertainty by decreasing target-masker similarity, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 114, 1, 368–379, https://doi.org/10.1121/1.1577562.
Festen J. M., Plomp R. (1983), Relations between auditory functions in impaired hearing, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 73, 2, 652–662, https://doi.org/10.1121/1.388957.
Festen J.M., Plomp R. (1990), Effects of fluctuating noise and interfering speech on the speech-reception threshold for impaired and normal hearing, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 88, 4, 1725–1736, https://doi.org/10.1121/1.400247.
Freyman R.L., Helfer K.S., McCall D.D., Clifton R.K. (1999), The role of perceived spatial separation in the unmasking of speech, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 106, 6, 3578–3588, https://doi.org/10.1121/1.428211.
Freyman R.L., Balakrishnan U., Helfer K.S. (2001), Spatial release from informational masking in speech recognition, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 109, 5, 2112–2122, https://doi.org/10.1121/1.1354984.
Garadat S.N., Litovsky R. (2006), Speech intelligibility in free field: spatial unmasking in preschool children, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 121, 2, 1047–1055, https://doi.org/10.1121/1.2409863.
Hickok G., Poeppel D. (2015), Neural basis of speech perception, [in:] Handbook of Clinical Neurology, Vol. 129, M.J. Aminoff, F. Boller, D.F. Swaab [Eds.], pp. 149–160, Elsevier.
Kollmeier B., Schädler M.R., Warzybok A., Meyer B.T., Brand T. (2016), Sentence recognition prediction for hearing-impaired listeners in stationary and fluctuation noise with FADE: Empowering the Attenuation and distortion concept by plomp with a quantitative processing model, Trends in Hearing, 20, 1–17, https://doi.org/10.1177/2331216516655795.
Kollmeier B., Warzybok A. (2015), The multilingual matrix test: Principles, applications, and comparison across languages: A review, International Journal of Audiology, 54, 2, 3–16, https://doi.org/10.3109/14992027.2015.1020971.
Lesica N. (2018), Why do hearing aids fail to restore normal auditory perception?, Trends in Neurosciences, 41, 4, 174–185, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tins.2018.01.008.
Mandel M., Bressler S., Shinn-Cunningham B., Ellis D. (2010), Evaluating source separation algorithms with reverberant speech, IEEE Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language Processing, 18, 7, 1872–1883.
Orduña-Bustamante F., Padilla-Ortiz A., Torres-Gallegos E. (2018), Binaural speech intelligibility through personal and non-personal HRTF via headphones, with added artificial noise and reverberation, Speech Communication, 105, 53–61, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.specom.2018.10.009.
O'Shaughnessy D. (2000), Speech communications. Human and machine, 2nd ed., Piscataway, IEEE Press.
Ozimek E. (2009), Polish sentence tests for measuring the intelligibility of speech in interfering noise, International Journal of Audiology, 49, 444–454, https://doi.org/10.1080/14992020902725521.
Ozimek E., Kociński J., Kutzner D., Sęk A., Wicher A. (2013), Speech intelligibility for different spatial configurations of target speech and competing noise source in a horizontal and median plane, Speech Communication, 55, 10, 1021–1032, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.specom.2013.06.00.
Ozimek E., Kutzner D., Sęk A., Wicher A. (2009), Polish sentence tests for measuring the intelligibility of speech in interfering noise, International Journal of Audiology, 48, 7, 433–443, https://doi.org/10.1080/14992020902725521
Pastusiak A. (2018), Validation of Polish Matrix Test for speech intelligibility measurement in noise in subjects with hearing impairment, M.Sc. Thesis, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań.
Peissig J. (1992), Binaural hearing aids strategies in complex background noise situations [in German: Binaurale Hörgerätestrategien in komplexen Störschallsituationen, Ph.D. Thesis, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen.
Peissig J., Kollmeier B. (1997), Directivity of binaural noise reduction in spatial multiple noise-source arrangements for normal and impaired listeners, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 101, 3, 1660–1670, https://doi.org/10.1121/1.418150.
Pruszewicz A. (2010), General diagnostics of hearing disorders [in Polish: Diagnostyka ogólna zaburzeń słuchu], [in:] Clinical audiology [in Polish: Audiologia kliniczna], Obrębowski A. [Eds.], pp. 329–344, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UM w Poznaniu, Poznań.
Sekula A., Świdziński P. (2011), Speech audiometry in prosthesis and hearing rehabilitation [in Polish: Audiometria mowy w protezowaniu i rehabilitacji słuchu], [in:] Selected problems of speech audiometry [in Polish: Wybrane zagadnienia z audiometrii mowy], Obrębowski A. [Eds.], pp. 117–132, Wydawnictwo Naukowe UM w Poznaniu, Poznań.
Shinn-Cuningham B.B, Schickler J., Kopocko N., Litovsky R. (2001), Spatial unmasking of nearby speech sources in a simulated anechoic environment, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 110, 2, 1118–1129, https://doi.org/10.1121/1.1386633.
Soli S., Wong L. (2008), Assessment of speech intelligibility in noise with the Hearing in Noise Test, International Journal of Audiology, 47, 6, 356–361 https://doi.org/10.1080/14992020801895136.
Summers V., Makashay M.J., Theodoroff S.M., Leek M.R. (2013), Suprathreshold auditory processing and speech perception in noise: hearing-impaired and normal-hearing listeners, Journal of the American Academy of Audiology, 24, 4, 274–292, https://doi.org/10.3766/jaaa.24.4.4.
Vetulani J. (2012), Brain: fascinations, problems, secrets [in Polish: Mózg: fascynacje, problemy, tajemnice], Homini, Kraków.
Wagener K., Brand T. (2006), The role of silent intervals for sentence intelligibility in fluctuating noise in hearing-impaired listeners, International Journal Audiology, 45, 1, 26–33, https://doi.org/10.1080/14992020500243851.
Wagener K.C., Brand T. (2005), Sentence intelligibility in noise for listeners with normal hearing and hearing impairment: Influence of measurement procedure and masking parameters, International Journal of Audiology, 44, 144–156, https://doi.org/10.1080/14992020500057517.
Warzybok A., Brand T., Wagener K.C., Kollmeier B. (2015), How much does language proficiency by non-native listeners influence speech audiometric tests in noise?, International Journal of Audiology, 54, 2, 88–99, https://doi.org/10.3109/14992027.2015.1063715.
WHO (2019), Deafness and hearing loss, World Health Organization, https://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/deafness-and-hearing-loss [accessed on: 8 March 2019].
DOI: 10.24425/aoa.2019.129726