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Speech pattern hearing aids for the profoundly hearing impaired: speech perception and auditory abilities
1Department of Phonetics and Linguistics, University College London, England.
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
|April 1, 1992
Summary
Prototype hearing aids extracting speech patterns show promise for the profoundly hearing impaired. These novel devices, encoding fundamental frequency and amplitude, may outperform conventional amplification for some users.
Area of Science:
- Audiology
- Biomedical Engineering
- Speech-Language Pathology
Background:
- Profound hearing impairment presents significant challenges for speech perception.
- Conventional amplification may not fully restore auditory function for all individuals.
- Novel hearing aid technologies aim to enhance speech pattern extraction and delivery.
Purpose of the Study:
- To evaluate prototype speech pattern hearing aids against conventional amplification in profoundly hearing-impaired adults.
- To assess the effectiveness of encoding voice fundamental frequency and other speech patterns.
- To determine if these aids offer advantages over current amplification methods.
Main Methods:
- Two studies compared wearable and laboratory prototype speech pattern aids with conventional amplification.
- Participants included profoundly deafened adults.
- Speech perception tasks included intonation reception, consonant identification, and connected discourse tracking.
- Auditory abilities like frequency discrimination and gap detection were also measured.
Main Results:
- Fundamental frequency information improved intonation reception and consonant identification for some participants.
- Compound speech pattern aids, encoding fundamental frequency, amplitude envelope, and voiceless excitation, showed benefits over fundamental frequency alone, particularly from amplitude information.
- Performance with compound speech pattern aids was superior to or similar to amplified speech in all participants tested.
- Greater benefit from fundamental frequency presentation was observed in subjects with greater hearing loss and less frequency selectivity.
Conclusions:
- Prototype speech pattern hearing aids can be more effective than conventional amplification for some profoundly hearing-impaired individuals.
- These aids may offer a valuable alternative to cochlear implants.
- Further research into optimizing speech pattern encoding and matching to residual hearing is warranted.