Testing effort for speech comprehension using the individuals’ cognitive spare capacity - the Auditory Inference Span test

• Modern hearing aids use a multitude of parameters to give the user an optimal speech signal. Fitting of the hearing aid becomes a handiwork due to the limited data of the patients hearing status (primarily an audiogram). A hearing in noise test (SNR threshold) is often used to evaluate the fitting. However, testing the SNR threshold as done in clinical use today is not ecological valid. Another way to think about hearing aid fitting is to ease the listening effort. Therefore, we propose the Auditory Inference Span Test (AIST) as a clinical tool during hearing aid fitting to assess the patient’s effort to understand speech. AIST is a combined auditory, memory, and processing test. It relies on the idea that the more cognitive resources that are required to process and understand speech, less cognitive resources are available for storage of the speech information. In AIST, sentences are presented in noise and afterwards the patient is required to recall and process the information from the sentences. Correctness and answering speed is measured and scores correlate to the effort required to understand the speech. Data from piloting tests indicate that the AIST is well suited as a clinical test for listening effort.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Sociologi -- Socialt arbete (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Sociology -- Social Work (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Disability research

Handikappsforskning

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

kon (ämneskategori)