Department of Speech and Hearing Science, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona.
Advanced Bionics, Valencia, California.
J Am Acad Audiol. 2021 Jan;32(1):39-44. doi: 10.1055/s-0040-1718893. Epub 2020 Dec 9.
Both the Roger remote microphone and on-ear, adaptive beamforming technologies (e.g., Phonak UltraZoom) have been shown to improve speech understanding in noise for cochlear implant (CI) listeners when tested in audio-only (A-only) test environments.
Our aim was to determine if adult and pediatric CI recipients benefited from these technologies in a more common environment-one in which both audio and visual cues were available and when overall performance was high.
Ten adult CI listeners (Experiment 1) and seven pediatric CI listeners (Experiment 2) were tested.
Adults were tested in quiet and in two levels of noise (level 1 and level 2) in A-only and audio-visual (AV) environments. There were four device conditions: (1) an ear canal-level, omnidirectional microphone (T-mic) in quiet, (2) the T-mic in noise, (3) an adaptive directional mic (UltraZoom) in noise, and (4) a wireless, remote mic (Roger Pen) in noise. Pediatric listeners were tested in quiet and in level 1 noise in A-only and AV environments. The test conditions were: (1) a behind-the-ear level omnidirectional mic (processor mic) in quiet, (2) the processor mic in noise, (3) the T-mic in noise, and (4) the Roger Pen in noise.
In each test condition, sentence understanding was assessed (percent correct) and ease of listening ratings were obtained. The sentence understanding data were entered into repeated-measures analyses of variance.
For both adult and pediatric listeners in the AV test conditions in level 1 noise, performance with the Roger Pen was significantly higher than with the T-mic. For both populations, performance in level 1 noise with the Roger Pen approached the level of baseline performance in quiet. Ease of listening in noise was rated higher in the Roger Pen conditions than in the T-mic or processor mic conditions in both A-only and AV test conditions.
The Roger remote mic and on-ear directional mic technologies benefit both speech understanding and ease of listening in a realistic laboratory test environment and are likely do the same in real-world listening environments.
罗杰远程麦克风和耳戴自适应波束成形技术（例如，峰力 UltraZoom）已被证明可以改善人工耳蜗（CI）使用者在仅音频（A-only）测试环境中的噪声下的言语理解能力。
我们的目的是确定成人和儿童 CI 使用者是否受益于这些技术，这些技术在更常见的环境中——既有音频又有视觉线索，且整体表现良好的环境中。
10 名成人 CI 使用者（实验 1）和 7 名儿童 CI 使用者（实验 2）接受了测试。
成人在安静和两个噪声水平（1 级和 2 级）下的 A-only 和音频-视觉（AV）环境中进行了测试。有四种设备条件：（1）在安静时使用耳道水平的全向麦克风（T-mic），（2）在噪声中使用 T-mic，（3）在噪声中使用自适应定向麦克风（UltraZoom），（4）在噪声中使用无线远程麦克风（Roger Pen）。儿科使用者在 A-only 和 AV 环境中在安静和 1 级噪声下进行了测试。测试条件为：（1）在安静时使用耳后水平的全向麦克风（处理器麦克风），（2）在噪声中使用处理器麦克风，（3）在噪声中使用 T-mic，（4）在噪声中使用 Roger Pen。
在每个测试条件下，评估句子理解（正确百分比）并获得易于聆听的评分。句子理解数据被输入到重复测量方差分析中。
在 AV 测试条件下，1 级噪声中，成人和儿科使用者的 Roger Pen 表现均显著优于 T-mic。对于两个群体，在 1 级噪声下使用 Roger Pen 的表现接近安静时的基线表现水平。在 A-only 和 AV 测试条件下，Roger Pen 条件下的噪声中聆听舒适度评分均高于 T-mic 或处理器麦克风条件。
在现实实验室测试环境中，Roger 远程麦克风和耳戴定向麦克风技术都有益于言语理解和聆听舒适度，并且在现实世界的聆听环境中可能也是如此。
