Localization in speech mixtures by listeners with hearing loss

Abstract

The ability of listeners with bilateral sensorineural hearing loss to localize a speech source in a multitalker mixture was measured. Five simultaneous words spoken by different talkers were presented over loudspeakers in a small room, and listeners localized one target word. Errors were significantly larger in this group compared to a control group with normal hearing. Localization of the target presented alone was not different between groups. The results suggest that hearing loss does not impair spatial hearing per se, but degrades the spatial representation of multiple simultaneous sounds.

Attention, Memory, and Auditory Processing in 10- to 15-Year-Old Children With Listening Difficulties

“…Speech localization in presence of competing speech (Best, Carlile, Kopčo, & van Schaik, 2011;Kopčo, Best, & Carlile, 2010) The target speech syllable was presented in one of the seven possible locations in the horizontal plane against a background of two competing talkers. The task of the participants was to point their nose to the perceived location of the target.…”

Listening through hearing aids affects spatial perception and speech intelligibility in normal-hearing listeners

“…A number of studies have explored the possibility that hearing loss impedes spatial perception, e.g., in terms of localization ability (Noble et al , 1994; Lorenzi et al , 1999; Best et al , 2010; Best et al , 2011; Hassager et al , 2017) or ITD discrimination performance (e.g., Durlach et al , 1981; Strelcyk and Dau, 2009; Spencer et al , 2016). Furthermore, several studies have suggested that HAs can disrupt the auditory cues involved in spatial perception (Van den Bogaert et al , 2006; Wiggins and Seeber, 2012; Akeroyd and Whitmer, 2016; Cubick and Dau, 2016; Hassager et al , 2017).…”

Localization and Spatial Discrimination in Children and Adolescents with Moderate Sensorineural Hearing Loss Tested without Their Hearing Aids

“…Also, training had no consequence on SRM [Glyde et al, 2014]. Another study with adult participants measured the accuracy of reporting the spatial location of a target -the single word "two" -presented over loudspeakers, either in quiet or when partially masked by four other words [Best et al, 2011]. A group of hearing-impaired listeners were worse at this task than a control group of normal listeners by about 1° in quiet and by about 7° in noise.…”

“…Earlier studies on auditory localization mostly investigated adult participants, and results must be differentiated between the performance of aided and unaided persons, i.e., hearing-impaired participants with or without wearing the hearing aid or with different adjustments of, for example, directionality of the microphones [Lorenzi et al, 1999;Drennan et al, 2005;Van den Bogaert et al, 2006;Keidser, et al, 2009;Best et al, 2011]. In general, hearing-impaired listeners perform worse in experiments on spatial hearing than normal-hearing subjects [Akeroyd, 2014].…”