Contribution
The impact of hearing devices on speech localization and intelligibility
* Presenting author
Abstract:
Hearing devices such as hearing aids can benefit a persons ability to communicate. However, the resulting spatial image is often disrupted leading to an internalized sound percept. In many daily situations, people need to simultaneously locate and understand speech. The disruption of the spatial image has previously been shown to affect both localization and speech intelligibility negatively. Here, a novel paradigm was developed where speech localization and intelligibility were measured simultaneously. Participants were asked to point their gaze towards the location of a sentence presented in background noise. Four conditions were tested where normal-hearing participants were either listening through loudspeakers, through headphones with simulated interaural time differences or through hearing aids with omni-directional microphones or microphones placed in the ear. Results show that the localization accuracy decreases when wearing headphones, compared to listening through loudspeakers, although the intelligibility was unaffected. However, no significant difference in localization accuracy comparing loudspeakers to hearing aids was found. Furthermore, it was found that localization accuracy generally got worse when the azimuthal target angle was moved further from the central medial point of the head. These results demonstrate the challenges that can be faced when communicating while listening through hearing aids or other hearing devices.