Do Room Acoustics Affect the Amplitude of Sound-Field Auditory Steady-State Responses?
Valentina Zapata-Rodriguez, Søren Laugesen, Cheol-Ho Jeong and 2 others
PMID 34551633WHAT IT FOUND
Simulated clinic rooms reduced the strength of auditory brain responses compared to an anechoic reference, with levels dropping between 4 and 12 dB.
This suggests room acoustics degrade the signal, potentially requiring longer testing times for hearing aid validation.
Key findings
01The primary outcome, ASSR level, was significantly reduced in all three simulated room conditions compared to the anechoic reference, with decreases of 4 to 12 dB for the first harmonic.
02Early Decay Time (EDT) strongly predicted ASSR levels at 2000 Hz and 4000 Hz, but showed little correlation at 500 Hz and 1000 Hz.
03Although response levels dropped, the responses were still detected in all conditions, with a 100% detection rate for the first harmonic in most cases.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The study used computer simulations of rooms rather than testing in actual physical clinic rooms. Participants were normal-hearing adults, not the infants or hard-to-test populations who are the primary candidates for this type of hearing aid validation. The simulation did not account for the effect of a patient's head and body on the sound field. Background noise in the rooms was not included in the simulation, only reverberation. Only three specific room types were simulated, which may not represent the wide variety of real-world clinical environments.
Declared interests
Funding was provided by Interacoustics A/S, the William Demant Foundation, and the Innovation Fund Denmark. The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume these results apply directly to infant hearing aid fitting. The study used normal-hearing adults and simulated rooms without background noise or body effects, so the actual impact on pediatric testing time and accuracy may differ.