Abstract
Objective: This study characterised the relationship between speech intelligibility and quality in listeners with hearing loss for a range of hearing-aid processing settings and acoustic conditions. Design: Binaural speech intelligibility scores and quality ratings were measured for sentences presented in babble noise and processed through a hearing-aid simulation. The intelligibility–quality relationship was investigated by (1) assessing the effects of experimental conditions on each task; (2) directly comparing intelligibility scores and quality ratings for each participant across the range of conditions; and (3) comparing the association between signal envelope fidelity (represented by a cepstral correlation metric) and intelligibility and quality. Study sample: Participants were 15 adults (7 females; age range 59–81 years) with mild to moderately severe sensorineural hearing loss. Results: Intelligibility and quality showed a positive association both with each other and with changes to signal fidelity introduced by the entire acoustic and signal-processing system including the additive noise and the hearing-aid output. As signal fidelity decreased, quality ratings changed at a slower rate than intelligibility scores. Individual psychometric functions were more variable for quality compared to intelligibility. Conclusions: Variability in the intelligibility–quality relationship reinforces the importance of measuring both intelligibility and quality in clinical hearing-aid fittings.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 46-58 |
Number of pages | 13 |
Journal | International Journal of Audiology |
Volume | 61 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 2022 |
Keywords
- Speech intelligibility
- envelope modulation
- hearing loss
- hearing-aid signal processing
- speech quality
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Speech and Hearing
- Language and Linguistics
- Linguistics and Language