Lertpoompunya Angkana, Ozmeral Erol J, Higgins Nathan C, Eddins David A
Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, United States.
Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Faculty of Medicine, Ramathibodi Hospital, Mahidol University, Bangkok, Thailand.
Front Psychol. 2024 Sep 17;15:1425972. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1425972. eCollection 2024.
Head movement plays a vital role in auditory processing by contributing to spatial awareness and the ability to identify and locate sound sources. Here we investigate head-orienting behaviors using a dual-task experimental paradigm to measure: (a) localization of a speech source; and (b) detection of meaningful speech (numbers), within a complex acoustic background. Ten younger adults with normal hearing and 20 older adults with mild-to-severe sensorineural hearing loss were evaluated in the free field on two head-movement conditions: (1) head fixed to the front and (2) head moving to a source location; and two context conditions: (1) with audio only or (2) with audio plus visual cues. Head-tracking analyses quantified the target location relative to head location, as well as the peak velocity during head movements. Evaluation of head-orienting behaviors revealed that both groups tended to undershoot the auditory target for targets beyond 60° in azimuth. Listeners with hearing loss had higher head-turn errors than the normal-hearing listeners, even when a visual location cue was provided. Digit detection accuracy was better for the normal-hearing than hearing-loss groups, with a main effect of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). When performing the dual-task paradigm in the most difficult listening environments, participants consistently demonstrated a wait-and-listen head-movement strategy, characterized by a short pause during which they maintained their head orientation and gathered information before orienting to the target location.
头部运动在听觉处理中起着至关重要的作用，它有助于空间感知以及识别和定位声源的能力。在此，我们使用双任务实验范式来研究头部定向行为，以测量：（a）语音源的定位；以及（b）在复杂声学背景中对有意义语音（数字）的检测。对10名听力正常的年轻成年人和20名患有轻度至重度感音神经性听力损失的老年人在自由场中进行了两种头部运动条件下的评估：（1）头部固定向前；（2）头部向声源位置移动；以及两种情境条件：（1）仅音频；（2）音频加视觉线索。头部跟踪分析量化了目标位置相对于头部位置的关系，以及头部运动期间的峰值速度。对头部定向行为的评估表明，对于方位角超过60°的目标，两组都倾向于未完全对准听觉目标。即使提供了视觉位置线索，听力损失的听众的头部转动误差也高于听力正常的听众。听力正常组的数字检测准确率高于听力损失组，存在信噪比（SNR）的主效应。在最困难的听力环境中执行双任务范式时，参与者始终表现出一种等待倾听的头部运动策略，其特征是短暂停顿，在此期间他们保持头部方向并在转向目标位置之前收集信息。
