Introducing real-life listening features into the clinical test environment: Part I: Measuring the hearing performance and evaluating the listening effort of individuals with normal hearing

Abstract

Objective: Controlled clinical test environments are very different from real-life listening situations in which speaker and background noise level variations can hinder a person’s ability to hear and follow conversations. This study was performed to evaluate the ability of people with normal hearing to follow a single speaker in the presence of background noise, and to explore relations between those measures and the listeners’ subjective assessments, listening effort, and sound quality judgements.

Methods: A group of adults with normal hearing were evaluated using the following battery of tests: (i) Roving Level Test, (ii) the Just Understanding Speech Test, (iii) Performance Perceptual Test, (iv) the Visual Analogue Scale to evaluate listening effort, and (iv) with a sound quality questionnaire.

Results: The results show that people with normal hearing tend to accurately estimate their hearing abilities, and both the listening effort required and speech recognition thresholds tend to increase with increasing background noise.

Discussion: Implementing a battery of tests that evaluate speech-in-noise listening abilities, listening effort, and subjective hearing perception might provide greater insight into hearing performance than traditional measures. Additionally, the data generated in this study can be used for comparison with measures obtained from hearing impaired and hearing device listeners, and as such, has the potential to guide counselling and rehabilitation to a range of clinical populations.

Conclusion: The examination of both the self-estimated and verified performance measurements in simulated real-life listening situations can provide audiologists with a comprehensive and realistic profile of a person’s hearing performance.

Keywords:

• Roving Level Test
• Just Understanding Speech Test
• Performance Perceptual Test
• Listening Effort
• Sound Quality
• Normal Hearing
• Hearing Performance

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Edda Amann (MED-EL) for her statistical analysis and Laura Kerr (MED-EL) for her medical writing services on a version of this manuscript.

Notes on contributors

Timo Bräcker, Dipl. Ing., M.Sc., is a Research Engineer at MED-EL's Research Center in Hannover, Germany. After gaining an education at the logopedic school in Oldenburg, Germany and working for half a year at a nursery school for speech impaired children, he studied Hearing Technology and Audiology at the University of Applied Sciences in Oldenburg, and later obtained a Master of Science degree. Timo joined MED-EL's Headquarters in Innsbruck, Austria as a Research Engineer in 2008 and transferred to MED-EL Germany in 2014. Currently, his research at the MED-EL Research Center in Hannover primarily concentrates on the planning and realization of audiological studies in cooperation with the Medical University of Hannover (MHH), Germany.

Jane Opie, PhD CCC/A, is a Senior Research Audiologist at MED-EL's Headquarters in Innsbruck, Austria. Dr Opie's research and clinical interests are older adults with cochlear implants, outcome measurement, recipient management, and understanding the factors that influence performance and other downstream health outcome measures.

Peter Nopp holds a PhD Degree in Electrical Engineering from the Technical University of Vienna, Austria. He is the Director of Research – Signal Processing at MED-EL's Headquarters in Innsbruck, Austria. He has worked in the field of cochlear implants for over 22 years, and his responsibilities include frontend signal processing algorithms, sound coding strategies, and fitting algorithms.

Dr Ilona Anderson trained as an Audiologist and Speech Language Pathologist at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. She completed her Doctorate in Medical Science at the University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium. She initially worked in various private practices in Johannesburg. Following this, she worked as a clinical tutor and lecturer at the University of Witwatersrand, where she also worked on the Johannesburg Cochlear Implant Programme. In 2001, Ilona joined MED-EL's Headquarters in Innsbruck, Austria as a Clinical Research Specialist. She is currently the Corporate Director of Clinical Research at MED-EL. Her team runs pre-market and post-market studies, they also conduct clinical evaluations for updates and recertifications, and they manage journal writing support. Ilona has authored over 45 peer-reviewed manuscripts.

Disclaimer statements

Contributors None.

Funding None

Conflicts of interest This study was designed by MED-EL GmbH.

Ethics approval None