scholarly journals Investigation of Phase Distortion on Perceived Speech Quality for Hearing-Impaired Listeners

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhuohuang Zhang ◽  
Donald S. Williamson ◽  
Yi Shen
Keyword(s):  
Speech Quality ◽  
Hearing Impaired ◽  
Phase Distortion

Effects of noise and distortion on speech quality judgments in normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners

2007 ◽  
Vol 122 (2) ◽  
pp. 1150-1164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn H. Arehart ◽  
James M. Kates ◽  
Melinda C. Anderson ◽  
Lewis O. Harvey
Keyword(s):  
Normal Hearing ◽  
Speech Quality ◽  
Hearing Impaired

scholarly journals Sound Quality Effects of an Adaptive Nonlinear Frequency Compression Processor with Normal-Hearing and Hearing-Impaired Listeners

2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (07) ◽  
pp. 552-563 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danielle Glista ◽  
Marianne Hawkins ◽  
Jonathan M. Vaisberg ◽  
Nazanin Pourmand ◽  
Vijay Parsa ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Hearing Aids ◽  
Sound Quality ◽  
Normal Hearing ◽  
Speech Quality ◽  
Hearing Impaired ◽  
Nonlinear Frequency ◽  
Experimental Conditions ◽  
Frequency Compression ◽  
Test Conditions ◽  
Quality Ratings

AbstractFrequency lowering (FL) technology offers a means of improving audibility of high-frequency sounds. For some listeners, the benefit of such technology can be accompanied by a perceived degradation in sound quality, depending on the strength of the FL setting.The studies presented in this article investigate the effect of a new type of FL signal processing for hearing aids, adaptive nonlinear frequency compression (ANFC), on subjective speech quality.Listener ratings of sound quality were collected for speech stimuli processed with systematically varied fitting parameters.Study 1 included 40 normal-hearing (NH) adult and child listeners. Study 2 included 11 hearing-impaired (HI) adult and child listeners. HI listeners were fitted with laboratory-worn hearing aids for use during listening tasks.Speech quality ratings were assessed across test conditions consisting of various strengths of static nonlinear frequency compression (NFC) and ANFC speech. Test conditions included those that were fine-tuned on an individual basis per hearing aid fitting and conditions that were modified to intentionally alter the sound quality of the signal.Listeners rated speech quality using the MUlti Stimulus test with Hidden Reference and Anchor (MUSHRA) test paradigm. Ratings were analyzed for reliability and to compare results across conditions.Results show that interrater reliability is high for both studies, indicating that NH and HI listeners from both adult and child age groups can reliably complete the MUSHRA task. Results comparing sound quality ratings across experimental conditions suggest that both the NH and HI listener groups rate the stimuli intended to have poor sound quality (e.g., anchors and the strongest available parameter settings) as having below-average sound quality ratings. A different trend in the results is reported when considering the other experimental conditions across the listener groups in the studies. Speech quality ratings measured with NH listeners improve as the strength of ANFC decreases, with a range of bad to good ratings reported, on average. Speech quality ratings measured with HI listeners are similar and above-average for many of the experimental stimuli, including those with fine-tuned NFC and ANFC parameters.Overall, HI listeners provide similar sound quality ratings when comparing static and adaptive forms of frequency compression, especially when considering the individualized parameter settings. These findings suggest that a range in settings may result in above-average sound quality for adults and children with hearing impairment. Furthermore, the fitter should fine-tune FL parameters for each individual listener, regardless of type of FL technology.

scholarly journals Speech Enhancement for Hearing Impaired Based on Bandpass Filters and a Compound Deep Denoising Autoencoder

Symmetry ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 1310
Author(s):  
Raghad Yaseen Lazim AL-Taai ◽  
Xiaojun Wu
Keyword(s):  
Signal To Noise Ratio ◽  
Hearing Aid ◽  
Bandpass Filters ◽  
Fixed Number ◽  
Speech Quality ◽  
Hearing Impaired ◽  
Denoising Autoencoder ◽  
Perceptual Evaluation ◽  
Residual Noise ◽  
Two Stages

Deep neural networks have been applied for speech enhancements efficiently. However, for large variations of speech patterns and noisy environments, an individual neural network with a fixed number of hidden layers causes strong interference, which can lead to a slow learning process, poor generalisation in an unknown signal-to-noise ratio in new inputs, and some residual noise in the enhanced output. In this paper, we present a new approach for the hearing impaired based on combining two stages: (1) a set of bandpass filters that split up the signal into eight separate bands each performing a frequency analysis of the speech signal; (2) multiple deep denoising autoencoder networks, with each working for a small specific enhancement task and learning to handle a subset of the whole training set. To evaluate the performance of the approach, the hearing-aid speech perception index, the hearing aid sound quality index, and the perceptual evaluation of speech quality were used. Improvements in speech quality and intelligibility were evaluated using seven subjects of sensorineural hearing loss audiogram. We compared the performance of the proposed approach with individual denoising autoencoder networks with three and five hidden layers. The experimental results showed that the proposed approach yielded higher quality and was more intelligible compared with three and five layers.

scholarly journals Identificeerbaarheid van kinderen met een gehoorbeperking

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathalie Boonen ◽  
Hanne Kloots ◽  
Steven Gillis
Keyword(s):  
Cochlear Implant ◽  
Hearing Aid ◽  
Speech Quality ◽  
Hearing Impaired ◽  
Device Use ◽  
Hearing Children ◽  
Children's Speech ◽  
Impaired Children ◽  
Hearing Impaired Children

Abstract Studies on the speech and language development of hearing-impaired children often focus on (deviations in) the children’s speech production. However, it is unclear if listeners also perceive differences between the speech of normally hearing and hearing-impaired children. This contribution wants to fill this void by investigating the overall perceived speech quality of both groups. Three groups of listeners (speech and language pathologists, primary school teachers and inexperienced listeners) judged 126 utterances of seven normally hearing children, seven children with an acoustic hearing aid and seven children with a cochlear implant, in a comparative judgment task. All children were approximately seven years old and received, in the case of the hearing-impaired children, their assistive hearing device before the age of two. The online tool D-PAC was used to administer the comparative judgement task. The listeners compared stimuli in pairs and decided which stimulus sounded best. This method ultimately leads to a ranking in which all stimuli are represented according to their overall perceived speech quality. The main result is that the speech of normally hearing children was preferred by the listeners. This indicates that, even after several years of device use, the speech quality of hearing-impaired children is perceived as different from that of normally hearing children. Within the group of hearing-impaired children, cochlear implanted children were judged to exhibit higher speech quality than acoustically hearing aided children, especially after a longer device use. The speech quality of the latter group, on the other hand, remained practically stable. Listeners, irrespectively of their degree of experience with (hearing-impaired) children’s speech, completed the task similarly. In other words: the difference between the overall perceived speech quality of normally hearing and hearing-impaired children is salient for all listener groups and they all slightly preferred children with a cochlear implant over children with an acoustic hearing aid.

Teacher Identification of Elementary School Children with Hearing Loss

1978 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard H. Nodar
Keyword(s):  
Elementary School ◽  
Hearing Loss ◽  
School Children ◽  
Elementary School Children ◽  
Total Sample ◽  
Hearing Impaired ◽  
Teacher Interviews ◽  
Teacher Screening ◽  
Children With Hearing Loss ◽  
Hearing Problems

The teachers of 2231 elementary school children were asked to identify those with known or suspected hearing problems. Following screening, the data were compared. Teachers identified 5% of the children as hearing-impaired, while screening identified only 3%. There was agreement between the two procedures on 1%. Subsequent to the teacher interviews, rescreening and tympanometry were conducted. These procedures indicated that teacher screening and tympanometry were in agreement on 2% of the total sample or 50% of the hearing-loss group. It was concluded that teachers could supplement audiometry, particularly when otoscopy and typanometry are not available.

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