Hearing aid processing affects acoustic features important for emotional responses to sounds

Abstract

A wide range of emotional responses is desirable and supports overall quality of life. However, adults with hearing loss exhibit a reduced range of emotional responses to non-speech sounds compared to their peers with normal hearing. Recent work demonstrates that audibility of low- and high-frequencycues supports emotion perception of non-speech sounds, as does modulation energy and roughness in the sound. The purpose of this study was to quantify the effects of hearing aid processing on acoustic parameters that have been related to emotional responses to non-speech sounds. Twenty-three adults with bilateral hearing loss rated valence of non-speech sounds, with and without hearing aids. The non-speech sounds were then recorded through an acoustic manikin with and without the research hearing aids with each participant’s settings. To examine the effects of hearing aid processing, the acoustic parameters previously related to emotional responses were analyzed using a combination of cluster analysis and linear regression. Results indicate that some acoustic parameters are affected by hearing aid processing (e.g., less amplitude modulation at 1270 Hz), which partially explain the reduced range of subjective emotional responses seen in adults with hearing loss. The results of this study have implications for the refinement of hearing aid processing algorithms.