Acoustically Transparent Hearing Aids Increase Physiological Markers of Listening Effort.

IF 2.6 2区 医学 Q1 AUDIOLOGY & SPEECH-LANGUAGE PATHOLOGY
Trends in Hearing Pub Date : 2025-01-01 Epub Date: 2025-04-03 DOI:10.1177/23312165251333225
Markus Kemper, Florian Denk, Hendrik Husstedt, Jonas Obleser
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Abstract

While hearing aids are beneficial in compensating for hearing loss and suppressing ambient noise, they may also introduce an unwanted processing burden to the listener's sensory and cognitive system. To investigate such adverse side effects, hearing aids may be set to a 'transparent mode', aiming to replicate natural hearing through the open ear as best as possible. Such transparent hearing aids have previously been demonstrated to exhibit a small but significant disadvantage in speech intelligibility, with less conclusive effects on self-rated listening effort. Here we aimed to reproduce these findings and expand them with neurophysiological measures of invested listening effort, including parietal alpha power and pupil size. Invested listening effort was measured across five task difficulties, ranging from nearly impossible to easy, with normal-hearing participants in both aided and unaided conditions. Results well reproduced a hearing aid disadvantage for speech intelligibility and subjective listening effort ratings. As to be expected, pupil size and parietal alpha power followed an inverted u-shape, peaking at moderate task difficulties (around SRT50). However, the transparent hearing aid increased pupil size and parietal alpha power at medium task demand (between SRT20 and SRT80). These neurophysiological effects were larger than those observed in speech intelligibility and subjective listening effort, respectively. The results gain plausibility by yielding a substantial association of individual pupil size and individual parietal alpha power. In sum, our findings suggest that key neurophysiological measures of invested listening effort are sensitive to the individual additional burden on speech intelligibility that hearing aid processing can introduce.

声学透明助听器增加听力努力的生理指标。
虽然助听器在补偿听力损失和抑制环境噪音方面是有益的,但它们也可能给听者的感觉和认知系统带来不必要的处理负担。为了研究这些副作用,助听器可能会被设置为“透明模式”,旨在通过开放的耳朵尽可能地复制自然听力。这种透明的助听器在语音清晰度方面表现出很小但很明显的缺点,对自评听力努力的影响较小。在这里,我们的目标是再现这些发现,并通过投入听力努力的神经生理学测量来扩展它们,包括顶叶α功率和瞳孔大小。研究人员对听力正常的参与者在辅助和非辅助条件下的五个任务难度进行了测量,从几乎不可能到容易。结果很好地再现了助听器在语音清晰度和主观听力努力评分方面的劣势。正如预期的那样,瞳孔大小和顶叶alpha功率呈倒u形,在中等任务难度(SRT50左右)时达到峰值。然而,在中等任务需求(SRT20和SRT80之间)时,透明助听器增加了瞳孔大小和顶叶α功率。这些神经生理效应分别大于言语可理解性和主观听力努力。结果通过产生个体瞳孔大小和个体顶叶alpha功率的实质性关联而获得合理性。总之,我们的研究结果表明,投入听力努力的关键神经生理指标对助听器处理可能带来的个人言语可理解性额外负担敏感。
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来源期刊
Trends in Hearing
Trends in Hearing AUDIOLOGY & SPEECH-LANGUAGE PATHOLOGYOTORH-OTORHINOLARYNGOLOGY
CiteScore
4.50
自引率
11.10%
发文量
44
审稿时长
12 weeks
期刊介绍: Trends in Hearing is an open access journal completely dedicated to publishing original research and reviews focusing on human hearing, hearing loss, hearing aids, auditory implants, and aural rehabilitation. Under its former name, Trends in Amplification, the journal established itself as a forum for concise explorations of all areas of translational hearing research by leaders in the field. Trends in Hearing has now expanded its focus to include original research articles, with the goal of becoming the premier venue for research related to human hearing and hearing loss.
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