Do Hearing Aids Improve Affect Perception?

Abstract

Normal-hearing listeners use acoustic cues in speech to interpret a speaker's emotional state. This study investigates the effect of hearing aids on the perception of the emotion dimensions arousal (aroused/calm) and valence (positive/ negative attitude) in older adults with hearing loss. More specifically, we investigate whether wearing a hearing aid improves the correlation between affect ratings and affect-related acoustic parameters. To that end, affect ratings by 23 hearing-aid users were compared for aided and unaided listening. Moreover, these ratings were compared to the ratings by an age-matched group of 22 participants with age-normal hearing.For arousal, hearing-aid users rated utterances as generally more aroused in the aided than in the unaided condition. Intensity differences were the strongest indictor of degree of arousal. Among the hearing-aid users, those with poorer hearing used additional prosodic cues (i.e., tempo and pitch) for their arousal ratings, compared to those with relatively good hearing. For valence, pitch was the only acoustic cue that was associated with valence. Neither listening condition nor hearing loss severity (differences among the hearing-aid users) influenced affect ratings or the use of affect-related acoustic parameters. Compared to the normal-hearing reference group, ratings of hearing-aid users in the aided condition did not generally differ in both emotion dimensions. However, hearing-aid users were more sensitive to intensity differences in their arousal ratings than the normal-hearing participants.We conclude that the use of hearing aids is important for the rehabilitation of affect perception and particularly influences the interpretation of arousal.

<p>Senescent Decline in Verbal-Emotion Identification by Older Hearing-Impaired Listeners – Do Hearing Aids Help?</p>

“…Picou 24 also assessed the perception of emotional valence and arousal in OHI listeners (N=13), but this time for nonspeech stimuli such as non-verbal human vocalizations (eg, laughter), animal vocalizations (eg, dog barking), and machine sounds (eg, dentist drill). In contrast to the findings of Schmidt et al, 23 the ratings given by the OHI listeners were significantly different from those of the YNH listeners, even when the OHI listeners were fitted with hearing instruments used for research purposes. The signal processing provided by the HAs neither improved nor impaired the perception of emotions in the OHI listeners.…”

“…So far, only a few studies investigated the auditory processing of voice emotions in speech in older-adult HI (OHI) persons when listening unaided and aided with HAs (for a recent overview, see Picou et al 22 ). Schmidt et al 23 assessed the emotional responses to speech sounds by asking OHI listeners (N=23), listening unaided or when wearing their own HAs, to rate short sentences in terms of valence (ie, their un/pleasantness) and arousal (ie, the level of activation produced). Those ratings were then compared to affect-related acoustic features (eg, the fundamental frequency, intensity) measured in the vocal stimuli.…”

Comparison of Relative Loudness Judgment in Children using Listening Devices with Typically Developing Children

“…This finding in the present study is supported by Shi et al, 34 who found that adults using hearing aids were able to perceive the loudness of environmental sounds. Also, it was noted by Schmidt et al 35 that children using hearing aids could use the intensity cues to perceive emotions similar as normal-hearing listeners.…”

Hearing aids: indications, technology, adaptation, and quality control

“…They compared 23 hearing impaired people with and without hearing aids with a control group (n=22). The affective perception, the emotional components, and the interpretation of excitation patterns could be improved with hearing aids [ 81 ].…”