Introduction
Our goal with this project is to identify the supra-threshold auditory processing deficits that drive the worsened speech understanding and increased listening effort experienced by hearing-impaired as well as by clinically normal-hearing older people, and to provide computational tools to simulate, predict and analyse these effects. A special focus of the project is the role of across-frequency neural fluctuations in the perception of speech and to what extent the efferent system (and its potential degradation with age and/or hearing loss) affects speech processing and effort deployment.
The project is funded by the William Demant Foundation and the Danish Innovation Fund.
Aims
The data and findings will be used to improve current speech-intelligibility models and to develop novel listening-effort prediction models. These models provide the opportunity to (i) investigate the underlying mechanisms in the auditory pathway, (ii) evaluate hearing-aid compensation strategies using the models as hearing-loss specific optimization tools, and (iii) develop novel signal processing strategies to counteract the worsened speech intelligibility and increased listening effort based on the analysis of the models’ pathway.
Methodology
We are approaching our hypothesis with a large-scale experimental data collection effort accompanied by simulations with powerful physiologically inspired computational auditory models. We are collecting speech-intelligibility, listening-effort, and diagnostic data of subjects with a broad range of hearing status. Our dataset will consist of clinical tests (such as the audiogram or ACT), behavioural measures (such as loudness perception and speech intelligibility) and physiological measures of effort, specifically pupillometry.
The project is connected to the Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg study group:
