Binaural Hearing for Understanding Speech in Noise with Hearing Aids

Abstract

O n e of the biggest auditory challenges for hearing aid wearers is the effective understanding of speech in noisy surroundings . The corresponding challenge for researchers and clinicians is to develop and fit effective wearable methods of auditory enhancemen t that optimize speech communicat ion u n d e r these condit ions. Hear ing in noise has always been a difficult p rob lem for hearing-impaired listeners, and it ranks as one of the c o m m o n complaints of hear ing aid wearers. Various fitting schemes and processing algorithms have been developed to try to he lp hear ing aid wearers extract speech information from noisy backgrounds; however, these efforts have resulted in varying degrees of success. This article discusses the utilization of residual binaural hear ing as a me thod for improving speech intelligibility and presents some results related to testing this methodology for sound quality and speech intelligibility in noise. To place these efforts in perspective, it is first appropriate to review some of the fundamental issues and problems in the unders tanding of speech in undesired background noise. SIGNAL-TO-NOISE RATIO