Speech intelligibility prediction in hearing-impaired listeners based on a psychoacoustically motivated perception model.

Abstract

Sensorneural hearing-impaired listeners suffer severely from deterioration in the processing and internal representation of acoustic signals. In order to understand this deterioration in detail, a numerical perception model was developed which is based on current functional models of the signal processing in the auditory system. To test this model, the individual's speech intelligibility in quiet and in noise was predicted. The primary input parameter of the model is the precisely measured audiogram of each listener. In a refined version of the model, additional input parameters are derived from predicting the individual's temporal forward masking and notched-noise measurements with the same model assumptions. The predictions of the perception model were compared with those of the articulation index (AI) and the speech transmission index (STI). The accuracy of prediction with the perception model is in the same range as with the AI and the STI. The model does not require a calibration function and has the advantage of a greater flexibility in including different processing deficits associated with hearing impairment. However, it requires more time for computation. For the hearing-impaired listeners examined so far the individually measured psychoacoustical parameters have only a secondary effect on the prediction as compared to the audiogram. Nevertheless, the underlying model is a first step toward a quantitative understanding of speech intelligibility and helps to distinguish between the influence of the "attenuation" and the "distortion" component of the hearing loss.