Abstract
The purpose of this study was to identify any differences between speech intelligibility measures obtained with MineEars electronic earmuffs (ProEars, Westcliffe, CO, USA) and the Bilsom model 847 (Sperian Hearing Protection, San Diego, CA, USA), which is a conventional passive-attenuation earmuff. These two devices are closely related, since the MineEars device consisted of a Bilsom 847 earmuff with the addition of electronic amplification circuits. Intelligibility scores were obtained by conducting listening tests with 15 normal-hearing human subject volunteers wearing the earmuffs. The primary research objective was to determine whether speech understanding differs between the passive earmuffs and the electronic earmuffs (with the volume control set at three different positions) in a background of 90 dB(A) continuous noise. As expected, results showed that speech intelligibility increased with higher speech-to-noise ratios; however, the electronic earmuff with the volume control set at full-on performed worse than when it was set to off or the lowest on setting. This finding suggests that the maximum volume control setting for these electronic earmuffs may not provide any benefits in terms of increased speech intelligibility in the background noise condition that was tested. Other volume control settings would need to be evaluated for their ability to produce higher speech intelligibility scores. Additionally, since an extensive electro-acoustic evaluation of the electronic earmuff was not performed as a part of this study, the exact cause of the reduced intelligibility scores at full volume remains unknown.
Highlights
Most of the studies of age-related decline in temporal resolution have used the gap detection task, in which the duration of the silent interval within a tone is manipulated until the participant is able to detect a non-continuous tone
Adults perform poorer than younger adults in gap detection tasks and need longer silent intervals to identify the presence of a gap u when the marker signal is 250 msec or shorter (Fink, Churan, & l Wittmann, 2005; Fitzgibbons & Gordon-Salant, 2001; Grose, Hall, & Buss, ia 2006; Lister & Roberts, 2005; Lister & Tarver, 2004; Roberts & Lister, 2004; Schneider & Hamstra, 1999; Schneider, Speranza, & Pichora-Fuller, 1998; rc Snell, 1997; Snell & Frisina, 2000; Snell, Mapes, Hickman, & Frisina, 2002; Strouse, Ashmead, Ohde, & Grantham, 1998)
The listener is required to judge the order of presentation of the tones to the two ears. This paradigm eliminates the possible use of spectral cues for order judgment and depends on central mechanism(s) for the temporal resolution of information received from both ears
Summary
Most of the studies of age-related decline in temporal resolution have used the gap detection task, in which the duration of the silent interval within a tone is manipulated until the participant A number of studies have reported that m older individuals require larger differences in duration between two tones in order to detect a difference (Abel and Hay, 1996; Fitzgibbons & Gordono Salant, 1994, 1995, 1996). The listener is required to judge the order of presentation of the tones to the two ears (left-right or rightleft) This paradigm eliminates the possible use of spectral cues for order judgment and depends on central mechanism(s) for the temporal resolution of information received from both ears.
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