Frequency-lowering processing to improve speech-in-noise intelligibility in patients with age-related hearing loss

Bruno, Rocco; Freni, Francesco; Portelli, Daniele; Alberti, Giuseppe; Gazia, Francesco; Meduri, Alessandro; Galletti, Francesco; Galletti, Bruno

doi:10.1007/s00405-020-06431-8

Cited by 6 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…In addition, since participants were recruited on a volunteering basis, and not from a certain institution, information about their hearing aid fitting was lacking. Future studies should also consider the resonance of the external auditory canal [48], the fitting of the hearing aid [49], and the use of extended-wear hearing aids.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Individual Differences in Auditory Training Benefits for Hearing Aid Users

Barda,

Shapira,

Fostick

2023

Clinics and Practice

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The present study aimed to examine whether individual differences in baseline speech perception could serve as predictors for the effectiveness and generalization of auditory training (AT) to non-trained tasks. Twelve adults, aged 60–75 years with bilateral hearing loss, completed a two-month, home-based, computerized AT program, involving sessions four times per week. Training tasks included the identification of vowel frontal, height, manner of articulation, point of articulation, voicing, and open-set consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) words. Non-trained speech perception tests were conducted one month before AT, prior to training, after one and two months of training, and during a two-month follow-up. The results showed that one month of AT improved performance in most trained tasks, with generalization observed in the CVC words test and HeBio sentences with speech-shaped noise (SSN). No evidence of spontaneous learning or added benefit from an extra month of training was found. Most importantly, baseline speech perception predicted improvements in both training and post-training generalization tasks. This emphasizes the significance of adopting an individualized approach when determining the potential effectiveness of AT, applicable in both clinical and research contexts.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Individual Differences in Auditory Training Benefits for Hearing Aid Users

Barda,

Shapira,

Fostick

2023

Clinics and Practice

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“…Hearing aid companies started offering frequency lowering in 2006 ( Alexander, 2016 ). Early algorithms caused distortion by overlaying higher frequency spectral bands on lower frequency bands and were relatively ineffective at improving perception of AO sentences in quiet or in noise ( Alexander, 2013 ; Bruno et al, 2021 ; Miller et al, 2016 ; Yakunina & Nam, 2021 ). Some frequency compression algorithms appear to be more effective in quiet ( Alexander & Rallapalli, 2017 ) and others in noise for some users but not everyone ( Bohnert et al, 2010 ; Hopkins et al, 2014 ; Shehorn et al, 2018 ).…”

Section: Contributions From Visual Perceptual Learning Research For S...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Lipreading: A Review of Its Continuing Importance for Speech Recognition With an Acquired Hearing Loss and Possibilities for Effective Training

et al. 2022

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Purpose: The goal of this review article is to reinvigorate interest in lipreading and lipreading training for adults with acquired hearing loss. Most adults benefit from being able to see the talker when speech is degraded; however, the effect size is related to their lipreading ability, which is typically poor in adults who have experienced normal hearing through most of their lives. Lipreading training has been viewed as a possible avenue for rehabilitation of adults with an acquired hearing loss, but most training approaches have not been particularly successful. Here, we describe lipreading and theoretically motivated approaches to its training, as well as examples of successful training paradigms. We discuss some extensions to auditory-only (AO) and audiovisual (AV) speech recognition. Method: Visual speech perception and word recognition are described. Traditional and contemporary views of training and perceptual learning are outlined. We focus on the roles of external and internal feedback and the training task in perceptual learning, and we describe results of lipreading training experiments. Results: Lipreading is commonly characterized as limited to viseme perception. However, evidence demonstrates subvisemic perception of visual phonetic information. Lipreading words also relies on lexical constraints, not unlike auditory spoken word recognition. Lipreading has been shown to be difficult to improve through training, but under specific feedback and task conditions, training can be successful, and learning can generalize to untrained materials, including AV sentence stimuli in noise. The results on lipreading have implications for AO and AV training and for use of acoustically processed speech in face-to-face communication. Conclusion: Given its importance for speech recognition with a hearing loss, we suggest that the research and clinical communities integrate lipreading in their efforts to improve speech recognition in adults with acquired hearing loss.

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