Tolerable delay for speech production and perception: effects of hearing ability and experience with hearing aids

Abstract

Objective: Processing delay is one of the important factors that limit the development of novel algorithms for hearing devices. In this study, both normal-hearing listeners and listeners with hearing loss were tested for their tolerance of processing delay up to 50 ms using a real-time setup for own-voice and external-voice conditions based on linear processing to avoid confounding effects of time-dependent gain. Design: Participants rated their perceived subjective annoyance for each condition on a 7-point Likert scale. Study sample: Twenty normal-hearing participants and twenty participants with a range of mild to moderate hearing losses. Results: Delay tolerance was significantly greater for the participants with hearing loss in two out of three voice conditions. The average slopes of annoyance ratings were negatively correlated with the degree of hearing loss across participants. A small trend of higher tolerance of delay by experienced users of hearing aids in comparison to new users was not significant. Conclusion: The increased tolerance of processing delay for speech production and perception with hearing loss and reduced sensitivity to changes in delay with stronger hearing loss may be beneficial for novel algorithms for hearing devices but the setup used in this study differed from commercial hearing aids.

Key Words:

• Speech perception
• psychoacoustics/hearing science
• hearing aids
• hearing aid satisfaction

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to express our gratitude to all participants who took part in this study. The authors would also like to thank Prof. Brian C. J. Moore for his helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper and four anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback. The work leading to this deliverable and the results described therein has received funding from the People Programme (Marie Curie Actions) of the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme FP7/2007-2013/under REA Grant agreement no. PITN-GA-2012-317521 and by EPSRC grant EP/K020501/1.

Declaration of interest: No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.