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An Automated System for Sound Localization Testing in Hearing-Impaired Listeners
Published on: March 13, 2026
167
Assessment of auditory spatial awareness in complex listening environments
Douglas S Brungart1, Julie Cohen1, Mary Cord1
1Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, 4954 North Palmer Road, Bethesda, Maryland 20889.
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
|October 18, 2014
Summary
Complex auditory situations challenge hearing, especially for hearing-impaired individuals. New tasks measuring auditory situation awareness may better evaluate hearing aid effectiveness in real-world listening environments.
Area of Science:
- Auditory perception
- Hearing science
- Human-computer interaction
Background:
- Listeners frequently encounter multiple simultaneous sound sources in daily life.
- Simple sound localization tasks may not fully assess the impact of assistive listening devices like hearing aids on auditory awareness.
- Evaluating hearing aid performance requires methods that reflect real-world listening complexity.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how task complexity affects sound source identification and localization in normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners.
- To compare the effectiveness of single-source, added-source, and removed-source tasks in evaluating auditory situation awareness.
- To determine if hearing aids improve performance in complex auditory environments for hearing-impaired listeners.
Main Methods:
- 10 normal-hearing and 20 hearing-impaired listeners performed sound identification and localization tasks.
- Tasks varied in complexity: single-source, added-source, and removed-source scenarios.
- Hearing-impaired listeners completed tasks with and without their hearing aids.
Main Results:
- Listener performance decreased with increased task complexity and competing sound sources.
- The added-source task showed sensitivity to performance differences, similar to standard localization tasks.
- The added-source task correlated differently with subjective and objective performance measures.
Conclusions:
- Auditory situation awareness tasks, particularly the added-source task, are sensitive to listening conditions and device effects.
- Complex auditory situation awareness measures may be valuable for assessing hearing aids and other auditory devices.
- This approach offers a more ecologically valid method for evaluating assistive listening technologies.
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