Remote-Microphone Benefit in Noise and Reverberation for Children Who are Hard of Hearing

Abstract

Background Remote-microphone (RM) systems are designed to reduce the impact of poor acoustics on speech understanding. However, there is limited research examining the effects of adding reverberation to noise on speech understanding when using hearing aids (HAs) and RM systems. Given the significant challenges posed by environments with poor acoustics for children who are hard of hearing, we evaluated the ability of a novel RM system to address the effects of noise and reverberation. Purpose We assessed the effect of a recently developed RM system on aided speech perception of children who were hard of hearing in noise and reverberation and how their performance compared to peers with “normal” hearing. The effect of aided speech audibility on sentence recognition when using an RM system also was assessed. Study Sample Twenty-two children with mild to severe hearing loss and 17 children with normal “hearing” (7–18 years) participated. Data Collection and Analysis An adaptive procedure was used to determine the signal-to-noise ratio for 50 and 95% correct sentence recognition in noise and noise plus reverberation (RT 300 ms). Linear mixed models were used to examine the effect of listening conditions on speech recognition with RMs for children who were hard of hearing compared to children with “normal” hearing and the effects of aided audibility on performance across all listening conditions for children who were hard of hearing. Results Children who were hard of hearing had poorer speech recognition for HAs alone than for HAs plus RM. Regardless of hearing status, children had poorer speech recognition in noise plus reverberation than in noise alone. Children who were hard of hearing had poorer speech recognition than peers with “normal” hearing when using HAs alone but comparable or better speech recognition with HAs plus RM. Children with better-aided audibility with the HAs showed better speech recognition with the HAs alone and with HAs plus RM. Conclusions Providing HAs that maximize speech audibility and coupling them with RM systems has the potential to improve communication access and outcomes for children who are hard of hearing in environments with noise and reverberation.

Cognitive and linguistic influences on speech recognition in children with hearing loss

“…The pattern of SRT across masking conditions was consistent with previous research studies that have examined the effects of TTM [17][18][19][20], reverberation [20][21], and spatial separation [22] on masked speech recognition in CNH and children with mild to severe hearing losses. For conditions where the target and masker were co-located, children performed best in a SSN masker.…”

“…The lack of a relationship between any audiological variables and the TTM with reverberation condition was unexpected, but many children with MBHL required a signal-to-noise ratio in that condition where the level of the target was higher than the masker such that no energetic masking was possible. This result highlights that the negative effects of reverberation on children's speech recognition may have other underlying mechanisms that differ from masked speech recognition tasks [20][21].…”

“…The two-talker masker was the same used in a previous study and consisted of one male and one female speaker reading a passage [18]. The reverberation was mixed with target and maskers in MATLAB based on a classroom simulation designed to provide RT60 = 400 ms, which was the modal reverberation time for elementary school classrooms in a previous study [21].…”

“…FASTRAK speech recognition also includes a condition with a two-talker masker with reverberation and a condition where the two-talker masker and target speech are spatially separated. Both reverberation [20][21] and spatial separation of target and masker [22] reflect everyday listening conditions that children with MBHL are likely to experience, such as in classrooms.…”

The Connected Life: Using Access Technology at Home, at School and in the Community

“…This means that wherever the student and the teacher are located in the classroom, the student has better access to the speech signal. The technology has been available since the 1960s, and a wealth of research demonstrates their ability to improve speech perception and access to auditory information in the classroom, regardless of degree of hearing loss, student age or type of hearing technology evaluated [70,71,[76][77][78][79][80][81][82][83][84][85]. In fact, provision of RMS is one of the most common accommodations reported to be included on student individual education plans [84][85][86][87].…”