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Turn an Ear to Hear: How Hearing-Impaired Listeners Can Exploit Head Orientation to Enhance Their Speech Intelligibility in Noisy Social Settings

Turning an ear toward the talker can enhance spatial release from masking. Here, with their head free, listeners attended to speech at a gradually diminishing signal-to-noise ratio and with the noise source azimuthally separated from the speech source by 180° or 90°. Young normal-hearing adult liste...

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Autores principales: Grange, Jacques A., Culling, John F., Bardsley, Barry, Mackinney, Laura I., Hughes, Sarah E., Backhouse, Steven S.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: SAGE Publications 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6196611/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30334495
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2331216518802701
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author Grange, Jacques A.
Culling, John F.
Bardsley, Barry
Mackinney, Laura I.
Hughes, Sarah E.
Backhouse, Steven S.
author_facet Grange, Jacques A.
Culling, John F.
Bardsley, Barry
Mackinney, Laura I.
Hughes, Sarah E.
Backhouse, Steven S.
author_sort Grange, Jacques A.
collection PubMed
description Turning an ear toward the talker can enhance spatial release from masking. Here, with their head free, listeners attended to speech at a gradually diminishing signal-to-noise ratio and with the noise source azimuthally separated from the speech source by 180° or 90°. Young normal-hearing adult listeners spontaneously turned an ear toward the speech source in 64% of audio-only trials, but a visible talker’s face or cochlear implant (CI) use significantly reduced this head-turn behavior. All listener groups made more head movements once instructed to explore the potential benefit of head turns and followed the speech to lower signal-to-noise ratios. Unilateral CI users improved the most. In a virtual restaurant simulation with nine interfering noises or voices, hearing-impaired listeners and simulated bilateral CI users typically obtained a 1 to 3 dB head-orientation benefit from a 30° head turn away from the talker. In diffuse interference environments, the advice to U.K. CI users from many CI professionals and the communication guidance available on the Internet most often advise the CI user to face the talker head on. However, CI users would benefit from guidelines that recommend they look sidelong at the talker with their better hearing or implanted ear oriented toward the talker.
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spelling pubmed-61966112018-10-24 Turn an Ear to Hear: How Hearing-Impaired Listeners Can Exploit Head Orientation to Enhance Their Speech Intelligibility in Noisy Social Settings Grange, Jacques A. Culling, John F. Bardsley, Barry Mackinney, Laura I. Hughes, Sarah E. Backhouse, Steven S. Trends Hear ISAAR Special Issue: Original Article Turning an ear toward the talker can enhance spatial release from masking. Here, with their head free, listeners attended to speech at a gradually diminishing signal-to-noise ratio and with the noise source azimuthally separated from the speech source by 180° or 90°. Young normal-hearing adult listeners spontaneously turned an ear toward the speech source in 64% of audio-only trials, but a visible talker’s face or cochlear implant (CI) use significantly reduced this head-turn behavior. All listener groups made more head movements once instructed to explore the potential benefit of head turns and followed the speech to lower signal-to-noise ratios. Unilateral CI users improved the most. In a virtual restaurant simulation with nine interfering noises or voices, hearing-impaired listeners and simulated bilateral CI users typically obtained a 1 to 3 dB head-orientation benefit from a 30° head turn away from the talker. In diffuse interference environments, the advice to U.K. CI users from many CI professionals and the communication guidance available on the Internet most often advise the CI user to face the talker head on. However, CI users would benefit from guidelines that recommend they look sidelong at the talker with their better hearing or implanted ear oriented toward the talker. SAGE Publications 2018-10-18 /pmc/articles/PMC6196611/ /pubmed/30334495 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2331216518802701 Text en © The Author(s) 2018 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ Creative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
spellingShingle ISAAR Special Issue: Original Article
Grange, Jacques A.
Culling, John F.
Bardsley, Barry
Mackinney, Laura I.
Hughes, Sarah E.
Backhouse, Steven S.
Turn an Ear to Hear: How Hearing-Impaired Listeners Can Exploit Head Orientation to Enhance Their Speech Intelligibility in Noisy Social Settings
title Turn an Ear to Hear: How Hearing-Impaired Listeners Can Exploit Head Orientation to Enhance Their Speech Intelligibility in Noisy Social Settings
title_full Turn an Ear to Hear: How Hearing-Impaired Listeners Can Exploit Head Orientation to Enhance Their Speech Intelligibility in Noisy Social Settings
title_fullStr Turn an Ear to Hear: How Hearing-Impaired Listeners Can Exploit Head Orientation to Enhance Their Speech Intelligibility in Noisy Social Settings
title_full_unstemmed Turn an Ear to Hear: How Hearing-Impaired Listeners Can Exploit Head Orientation to Enhance Their Speech Intelligibility in Noisy Social Settings
title_short Turn an Ear to Hear: How Hearing-Impaired Listeners Can Exploit Head Orientation to Enhance Their Speech Intelligibility in Noisy Social Settings
title_sort turn an ear to hear: how hearing-impaired listeners can exploit head orientation to enhance their speech intelligibility in noisy social settings
topic ISAAR Special Issue: Original Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6196611/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30334495
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2331216518802701
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