Three experiments were performed to evaluate the use of subjective intelligibility estimations as a method for measuring hearing aid benefit. Subjective and objective speech intelligibility scores were compared for young normal-hearing and elderly hearing-impaired listeners. Objective intelligibility scores were obtained using the Connected Speech Test (CST). This test consists of conversationa...

Hearing impairment was indicated as the second largest proven deficiency in world population. People with such disabilities face many obstacles in their communication and interaction with listeners, even with equal level of cognitive development. Collaborative tools offer the possibility to improve the interaction between listeners and hearing impaired subjects. This study presents an approach ...

Auditory hallucinations, the perception of a sound without corresponding source, are common in people with hearing impairment. Two forms can be distinguished: simple (i.e., tinnitus) and complex hallucinations (speech music). Little is known about precise mechanisms underlying these types hallucinations. Here we tested assumption that spontaneous activity auditory pathways, following deafferent...

ABSTRACT The present study was conducted to compare the effectiveness of assertiveness group training on social anxiety (SAD) between deaf and hearing impaired adolescents. Forty eight (24 deaf and 24 hearing impaired) people participated in this study. First, participants with SAD, i.e. attaining the scores above 40 for Connor's Social Inventory Scale 2000 (SPIN), were selected according to co...

BACKGROUND we aimed to assess both cross-sectional and temporal links between measured hearing impairment and self-perceived hearing handicap, and health outcomes. METHODS in total, 811 Blue Mountains Hearing Study participants (Sydney, Australia) aged ≥55 years were examined twice (1997-99 and 2002-04). Hearing levels were measured with pure-tone audiometry. The shortened version of the hear...

OBJECTIVE The objective of this study is to explore the sensitivity to intermodal asynchrony in audiovisual speech with moderate to severe sensorineural hearing loss. Based on previous studies, two opposing expectations were an increase in sensitivity, as hearing-impaired listeners heavily rely on lipreading in daily life, and a reduction in sensitivity, as hearing-impaired listeners tend to be...

Localizing a sound source requires the auditory system to determine its direction and its distance. In general, hearing-impaired listeners do less well in experiments measuring localization performance than normal-hearing listeners, and hearing aids often exacerbate matters. This article summarizes the major experimental effects in direction (and its underlying cues of interaural time differenc...

The purpose of the present study was to determine whether varying the presentation level of stop consonant stimuli resulted in similar phonetic boundary shifts for listeners with normal and impaired hearing. Sixteen normal-hearing and 16 hearing-impaired listeners categorized synthetic speech stimuli as /b/, /d/, or /g/. The onset frequency of F2 varied from 900 to 2300 Hz (100-Hz steps), and t...

This study examined the performance of four subject groups on several temporally based measures of auditory processing and several measures of speech identification. The four subjects groups were (a) young normal-hearing adults; (b)-hearing-impaired elderly subjects ranging in age from 65 to 75 years; (c) hearing-impaired elderly adults ranging in age from 76 to 86 years; and (d) young normal-h...

Separating sound sources in complex acoustical environment is an everyday challenge for our auditory system. Listeners with normal hearing are able to use binaural cues to solve this problem, but in impaired hearing these mechanisms are often disturbed. The aim of binaural noise reduction schemes in hearing aids is to improve the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in complex acoustic environments and ...