Speech intelligibility of simulated hearing loss sounds and its prediction using the Gammachirp Envelope Similarity Index (GESI)

TL;DR

This study evaluates speech intelligibility of simulated hearing loss sounds in different environments and introduces GESI, an objective measure that accurately predicts intelligibility, aiding hearing loss assessment.

Contribution

The paper presents GESI, a novel objective intelligibility measure that effectively predicts speech understanding in simulated hearing loss conditions across environments.

Findings

Remote experiment results can be aligned with laboratory results through data screening.

GESI explains psychometric functions of speech intelligibility in both environments.

GESI can potentially model hearing-impaired listeners' speech understanding.

Abstract

In the present study, speech intelligibility (SI) experiments were performed using simulated hearing loss (HL) sounds in laboratory and remote environments to clarify the effects of peripheral dysfunction. Noisy speech sounds were processed to simulate the average HL of 70- and 80-year-olds using Wadai Hearing Impairment Simulator (WHIS). These sounds were presented to normal hearing (NH) listeners whose cognitive function could be assumed to be normal. The results showed that the divergence was larger in the remote experiments than in the laboratory ones. However, the remote results could be equalized to the laboratory ones, mostly through data screening using the results of tone pip tests prepared on the experimental web page. In addition, a newly proposed objective intelligibility measure (OIM) called the Gammachirp Envelope Similarity Index (GESI) explained the psychometric functions in the laboratory and remote experiments fairly well. GESI has the potential to explain the SI of HI listeners by properly setting HL parameters.