Perception of Auditory Distance in Normal-Hearing and Moderate-to-Profound Hearing-Impaired Listeners.
Gilles Courtois, Vincent Grimaldi, Hervé Lissek and 2 others
PMID 31774032WHAT IT FOUND
Adding early reflections to hearing aid remote microphone systems made speech sound externalized in over 90% of tests.
Hearing aids with compression did not harm distance perception, and optimizing audibility mattered more than preserving spatial cues.
Key findings
01The new SHRF + ER algorithm achieved externalization rates higher than 90% in both normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners.
02Wide dynamic range compression (WDRC) in hearing aids did not adversely affect the perception of auditory distance or externalization.
03Hearing-impaired listeners showed a contracted perception of distance, tending to underestimate far sounds and externalize diotic stimuli.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
Participants listened over headphones, not through their actual hearing aids, which may limit how well the results apply to real-world device use. The study only tested indoor, nearby distances (up to 2 meters) and did not assess real-world localization accuracy. The specific acoustic cues (like direct-to-reverberant ratio) could not be calculated for hearing-impaired participants due to proprietary compression settings. The sample size of hearing-impaired listeners was small (20), and all were long-term users of the same brand of hearing aids.
Declared interests
The study was supported by non-U.S. government funding. The authors are affiliated with research groups developing the SHRF technology, and the hearing aids used were Phonak Bolero Q.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that hearing aid compression ruins spatial hearing. This study found that optimizing audibility through compression was more beneficial for distance perception than preserving raw spatial cues, likely due to long-term adaptation by the listeners.