title: Integrating cognitive and peripheral factors in predicting hearing-aid processing effectiveness.
abstract: Individual factors beyond the audiogram, such as age and cognitive abilities, can influence speech intelligibility and speech quality judgments. This paper develops a neural network framework for combining multiple subject factors into a single model that predicts speech intelligibility and quality for a nonlinear hearing-aid processing strategy. The nonlinear processing approach used in the paper is frequency compression, which is intended to improve the audibility of high-frequency speech sounds by shifting them to lower frequency regions where listeners with high-frequency loss have better hearing thresholds. An ensemble averaging approach is used for the neural network to avoid the problems associated with overfitting. Models are developed for two subject groups, one having nearly normal hearing and the other mild-to-moderate sloping losses.
authors: Department of Speech Language and Hearing Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309.
authors: James M
authors: JM
authors: Kates
authors: Department of Speech Language and Hearing Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309.
authors: Kathryn H
authors: KH
authors: Arehart
authors: Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders and Knowles Hearing Center, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60201.
authors: Pamela E
authors: PE
authors: Souza
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D001302:Audiometry, Speech; D001309:Auditory Threshold; D003071:Cognition; D004558:Electric Stimulation; D004867:Equipment Design; D005260:Female; D006310:Hearing Aids; D034381:Hearing Loss / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D016571:Neural Networks, Computer; D009622:Noise / Q000009:adverse effects; D017711:Nonlinear Dynamics; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D019986:Persons with Hearing Disabilities / Q000523:psychology / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; D013065:Speech Intelligibility; D013067:Speech Perception