Warfighter auditory situation awareness: Effects of augmented hearing protection/enhancement devices and TCAPS for military ground combat applications

Abstract

The results have serious implications for selection of HPDs, HPEDs, and TCAPS for applications where preservation of auditory situational awareness via the fundamental detection and identification tasks are essential.

Effects of Active and Passive Hearing Protection Devices on Sound Source Localization, Speech Recognition, and Tone Detection

“…While level-dependent HPDs are thus generally improved over level-independent HPDs, a variety of persistent deleterious auditory perceptual effects of HPDs have been noted. For example, most devices still cause some attenuation, and reduce the detectability of low-intensity (or distant) sources [ 7 ]. Relatedly, HPDs can also significantly degrade speech intelligibility for people with concomitant hearing loss [ 13 ], although normal-hearing individuals may experience improvements in speech intelligibility in noisy environments due to the broadband attenuation of background noise provided by HPDs [ 13 – 15 ].…”

The interaction of hearing loss and level-dependent hearing protection on speech recognition in noise

“…Finally, situational awareness in the noisy workplace is not only dependent on speech communication; it also involves a wider range of aural communication skills, including signal detection and sound localization (Abel et al, 2009;Casali et al, 2009;Talcott et al, 2012;Clasing & Casali, 2014). Further work should continue to address all these dimensions in drawing up guidelines to obtain the best overall solution for each particular user given the task demands.…”

Effects of user training with electronically-modulated sound transmission hearing protectors and the open ear on horizontal localization ability

“…For example, the azimuthal localization degradations with certain EMHPs and TCAPS have been experimentally shown to be quite device-specifi c with signals ranging from backup alarms (Alali & Casali, 2011) to gunshots (Casali et al, 2012). Likewise, the auditory detection and recognition/identifi cation of signals under various EMHPs and TCAPS has also been demonstrated to be variable across devices, and of serious concern in some cases where the objective performance is signifi cantly worse than the open ear (Clasing & Casali, 2014). The deleterious effects, whether perceived or real, on localization and other aspects of auditory situation awareness may lead warfi ghters or other military personnel to lay aside their EMHPs and TCAPS at critical times, and as a result, they are vulnerable to noise exposure hazards and resultant hearing loss.…”