The Influence of Noise Reduction on Speech Intelligibility, Response Times to Speech, and Perceived Listening Effort in Normal-Hearing Listeners.
Maj van den Tillaart-Haverkate, Inge de Ronde-Brons, Wouter A Dreschler and 1 others
PMID 28656807WHAT IT FOUND
Noise reduction did not speed simple digit identification in 12 normal-hearing listeners.
It did speed a harder arithmetic task. The ideal algorithm felt less effortful; the realistic algorithm did not change perceived effort.
Key findings
01Noise reduction did not change response times in the simple digit identification task.
02In the arithmetic task, relative response times were 125 ms longer for unprocessed speech than for IBM and 28 ms longer than for MMSE.
03Participants rated the ideal IBM algorithm as requiring less effort than unprocessed speech or MMSE-processed speech.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
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What it does not show
Only 12 normal-hearing young adults were tested, so the results may not apply to hearing-impaired people, hearing-aid users, or older adults. Speech intelligibility was near ceiling in the main conditions, so the study could not show large gains in how well speech is understood. The IBM algorithm is unrealistic for hearing aids because it receives speech and noise separately, so it shows a possible maximum benefit rather than a practical device setting. The -10 dB data were collected in a separate session and were not included in the main statistical analysis. Learning effects may have influenced response times, especially in the more complex arithmetic task. Response time and subjective effort did not match perfectly: MMSE improved arithmetic response time but did not reduce rated effort.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read this as evidence that hearing-aid noise reduction improves patient communication. The study used 12 normal-hearing listeners, laboratory algorithms including an unrealistic ideal mask, and intelligibility was already near ceiling.