Evaluation of wideband frequency responses and non-linear frequency compression for children with mild to moderate high-frequency hearing loss

Wolfe, Jace; John, Andrew; Schafer, Erin C.; Hudson, Mary; Boretzki, Michael; Scollie, Susan; Woods, Whitney; Wheeler, Julie; Hudgens, Krystal; Neumann, Sara

doi:10.3109/14992027.2014.943845

Cited by 20 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…This expectation was partially supported by the data because 33%-50% improvements in consonant recognition for the /s/ and /z/ from the high-frequency stimulus set and for isolated tokens from the VCV stimulus set (mainly, fricative and stop consonants) occurred with NFC settings that were the most detrimental to low-frequency dominated vowels (low SF, medium to high CR). These results are consistent with several other studies on children and adults that found that improvements with NFC were primarily limited to medial or final /s/ and /z/ in quiet or in noise, especially using tests of discrimination threshold and plural detection (e.g., Simpson et al, 2005;Wolfe et al, 2010;Wolfe et al, 2011;Wolfe et al, 2015;Glista et al, 2009;Glista et al, 2012;Alexander et al, 2014;Hopkins et al, 2014;Zhang et al, 2014;Picou et al, 2015;Ellis and Munro, 2015). The difference in outcomes for the final vs medial /s/ in this study (VCV context vs /iC/ context) may be attributed to nonspectral cues that can help distinguish it from the final / Ð /, such as duration and intensity (e.g., Jongman et al, 2000), with the latter being longer and louder.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

“…The available data suggests that the effect of context might depend on the severity of loss and consequently on the need for additional information beyond that provided by contextual cues. Testing listeners with mild to moderate SNHL, both Wolfe et al (2015) and Picou et al (2015) found improvements in /s/ discrimination by children and adults, respectively, following $1-month trial periods with NFC-enabled hearing aids, but found no statistical improvements on tests of speech recognition in noise. On the other hand, Wolfe et al (2011) reported improvements on both consonant recognition and sentence recognition in noise for children with moderate SNHL after 6 months of regular use of hearing aids with NFC, whereas early testing at 6 weeks did not show a significant difference for the sentence recognition task (Wolfe et al, 2010).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…On the other hand, while individuals with less severe hearing loss have fewer speech perception deficits, they also have a wider bandwidth of audibility available to implement frequency lowering. This property combined with NFC processing may make it possible to provide some benefit to these individuals with less risk of distorting important low-frequency information (Alexander et al, 2014;Brennan et al, 2014;Picou et al, 2015;Wolfe et al, 2015).…”

Section: Study Rationalementioning

confidence: 99%

“…For listeners with more severe SNHL, the inner hair cells that code these frequencies may be absent or non-functioning, possibly rendering amplification in this region less useful (e.g., Baer et al, 2002;Vickers et al, 2001). Frequency-lowering techniques are a means of re-introducing high-frequency speech cues for listeners with SNHL (Simpson 2009;Alexander et al, 2014;Brennan et al, 2014;Picou et al, 2015;Wolfe et al, 2015). The premise behind all frequency-lowering techniques is to use all or part of the aidable low-frequency spectrum to code parts of the inaudible high-frequency spectrum.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Nonlinear frequency compression: Influence of start frequency and input bandwidth on consonant and vowel recognition

Alexander

2016

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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By varying parameters that control nonlinear frequency compression (NFC), this study examined how different ways of compressing inaudible mid-and/or high-frequency information at lower frequencies influences perception of consonants and vowels. Twenty-eight listeners with mild to moderately severe hearing loss identified consonants and vowels from nonsense syllables in noise following amplification via a hearing aid simulator. Low-pass filtering and the selection of NFC parameters fixed the output bandwidth at a frequency representing a moderately severe (3.3 kHz, group MS) or a mild-to-moderate (5.0 kHz, group MM) high-frequency loss. For each group (n ¼ 14), effects of six combinations of NFC start frequency (SF) and input bandwidth [by varying the compression ratio (CR)] were examined. For both groups, the 1.6 kHz SF significantly reduced vowel and consonant recognition, especially as CR increased; whereas, recognition was generally unaffected if SF increased at the expense of a higher CR. Vowel recognition detriments for group MS were moderately correlated with the size of the second formant frequency shift following NFC. For both groups, significant improvement (33%-50%) with NFC was confined to final /s/ and /z/ and to some VCV tokens, perhaps because of listeners' limited exposure to each setting. No set of parameters simultaneously maximized recognition across all tokens.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Section: Study Rationalementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Nonlinear frequency compression: Influence of start frequency and input bandwidth on consonant and vowel recognition

Alexander

2016

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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“…Findings are mixed on the effect of NFC relative to RBW on speech recognition and potential relationships are complex (Alexander, 2013; Alexander et al, 2014; Arehart et al, 2013; Bentler et al, 2014; Ching et al, 2013; Ellis & Munro, 2015; Glista et al, 2009; Glista et al, 2012; Hopkins et al, 2014; John et al, 2014; Kokx-Ryan et al, 2015; McCreery et al, 2013, 2014; Picou et al, 2015; Simpson et al, 2005, 2006; Souza et al, 2013; Wolfe et al, 2010, 2011, 2015). In general, benefit from NFC is better when access to high frequency sounds is increased with NFC (McCreery et al, 2013, 2014) but spectral distortion is minimized (Souza et al, 2013) as well as in listeners with greater high-frequency hearing loss (Brennan et al, 2014; Glista et al, 2009; Souza et al, 2013; but see Kokx-Ryan et al, 2015).…”

Section: Speech Recognitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Listening Effort and Speech Recognition with Frequency Compression Amplification for Children and Adults with Hearing Loss

et al. 2017

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Background Nonlinear frequency compression (NFC) can improve the audibility of high frequency sounds by lowering them to a frequency where audibility is better; however, this lowering results in spectral distortion. Consequently, performance is a combination of the effects of increased access to high frequency sounds and the detrimental effects of spectral distortion. Previous work has demonstrated positive benefits of NFC on speech recognition when NFC is set to improve audibility while minimizing distortion. However, the extent to which NFC impacts listening effort is not well understood, especially for children with hearing loss. Purpose To examine the impact of NFC on recognition and listening effort for speech in adults and children with hearing loss. Research Design Within-subject, quasi-experimental study. Participants listened to amplified nonsense words that were 1) frequency-lowered using NFC, 2) low-pass filtered at 5 kHz to simulate the restricted bandwidth (RBW) of conventional hearing aid processing, or 3) low-pass filtered at 10 kHz to simulate extended bandwidth (EBW) amplification. Participants were blinded to the type of processing. Participants’ responses to each nonsense word were analyzed for accuracy and verbal response time (listening effort). Study Sample Fourteen children (8–16 years) and 14 adults (19–65 years) with mild-to-severe sensorineural hearing loss. Intervention Participants listened to speech processed by a hearing aid simulator that amplified input signals to fit a prescriptive target fitting procedure. Results Both the children and adults identified the nonsense words and initial consonants better with EBW and NFC than with RBW. The type of processing did not affect the identification of the vowels or final consonants. There was no effect of age for recognition of the nonsense words, initial consonants, medial vowels or final consonants. Verbal response time did not change significantly with the type of processing or age. Conclusion Both the adults and children demonstrated improved speech recognition with access to the high-frequency sounds in speech. Listening effort as measured by verbal response time was not affected by access to high-frequency sounds.

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Hearing Aid Signal Processing

Launer

Zakis²,

Moore

2016

Springer Handbook of Auditory Research

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Evaluation of wideband frequency responses and non-linear frequency compression for children with mild to moderate high-frequency hearing loss

Cited by 20 publications

References 21 publications

Nonlinear frequency compression: Influence of start frequency and input bandwidth on consonant and vowel recognition

Nonlinear frequency compression: Influence of start frequency and input bandwidth on consonant and vowel recognition

Listening Effort and Speech Recognition with Frequency Compression Amplification for Children and Adults with Hearing Loss

Hearing Aid Signal Processing

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