SLHS Department, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA.
Audio Engineering Technology, Belmont University, Nashville, TN, USA.
Int J Audiol. 2022 Jan;61(1):46-58. doi: 10.1080/14992027.2021.1900609. Epub 2021 Apr 29.
This study characterised the relationship between speech intelligibility and quality in listeners with hearing loss for a range of hearing-aid processing settings and acoustic conditions.
Binaural speech intelligibility scores and quality ratings were measured for sentences presented in babble noise and processed through a hearing-aid simulation. The intelligibility-quality relationship was investigated by (1) assessing the effects of experimental conditions on each task; (2) directly comparing intelligibility scores and quality ratings for each participant across the range of conditions; and (3) comparing the association between signal envelope fidelity (represented by a cepstral correlation metric) and intelligibility and quality.
Participants were 15 adults (7 females; age range 59-81 years) with mild to moderately severe sensorineural hearing loss.
Intelligibility and quality showed a positive association both with each other and with changes to signal fidelity introduced by the entire acoustic and signal-processing system including the additive noise and the hearing-aid output. As signal fidelity decreased, quality ratings changed at a slower rate than intelligibility scores. Individual psychometric functions were more variable for quality compared to intelligibility.
Variability in the intelligibility-quality relationship reinforces the importance of measuring both intelligibility and quality in clinical hearing-aid fittings.
本研究旨在描述一系列助听器处理设置和声学条件下听力损失患者的言语可懂度和质量之间的关系。
在噪声环境中呈现句子，并通过助听器模拟进行处理，测量双耳言语可懂度得分和质量等级。通过（1）评估实验条件对每个任务的影响；（2）直接比较每个参与者在不同条件下的可懂度得分和质量等级；（3）比较信号包络保真度（由倒谱相关度量表示）与可懂度和质量之间的关联，研究了可懂度-质量关系。
参与者为 15 名成年人（7 名女性；年龄 59-81 岁），患有轻度至中度感音神经性听力损失。
可懂度和质量彼此之间以及与整个声信号处理系统（包括附加噪声和助听器输出）引入的信号保真度变化均呈正相关。随着信号保真度的降低，质量等级的变化速度比可懂度得分慢。与可懂度相比，质量的个体心理测量函数更具变异性。
可懂度-质量关系的可变性强调了在临床助听器适配中同时测量可懂度和质量的重要性。
