Während der Corona-Pandemie wurde das Tragen einer Gesichtsmaske in vielen Bereichen zur Pflicht. Durch Masken wird beim Sprechen das Audiosignal gedämpft und das Mundbild verdeckt. Es zeigte sich in vorangegangenen Studien, dass Normalhörende das Lippenlesen nutzen und auch von audiovisuellen Konditionen profitieren. Inwiefern das Tragen einer Gesichtsmaske das Sprachverstehen Normalhörender und Menschen unterschiedlicher Hörminderungskategorien beeinflusst, wurde bei dieser klinischen Studie untersucht. Mithilfe einer modifizierten Version des audiovisuellen Oldenburger Satztests (AV-OLSA) konnte gezeigt werden, dass Personen mit einem größeren Hörverlust im Störgeräusch auch mehr von visuellen Signalen beim audiovisuellen Sprachverstehen profitieren und dementsprechend auch die Einschränkungen durch Gesichtsmasken beim Sprachverstehen größer sind. Es sollte daher darauf geachtet werden, in der Kommunikation mit Personen mit Hörminderung, das Mundbild sichtbar zu machen.
Wearing a face mask has become mandatory in many areas during the coronavirus pandemic. Masks attenuate the audio signal when speaking and cover the lips of a speaker. Previous studies have shown that individuals with normal hearing use lipreading and thus benefit from audiovisual conditions. In the following clinical study we investigated the extent to which wearing a face mask influences the speech intelligibility of people with normal hearing and people with different categories of hearing loss. Using a modified version of the audiovisual Oldenburg sentence test (AV-OLSA), it was shown that individuals with a greater hearing loss in noise also benefit more from visual signals in audiovisual speech comprehension and therefore influence of face masks on speech comprehension is correspondingly greater. Care should therefore be taken to make the mouth area visible when communicating with people with hearing loss.
In speech audiometry, the speech-recognition threshold (SRT) is usually established by adjusting the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) until 50% of the words or sentences are repeated correctly. However, these conditions are rarely encountered in everyday situations. Therefore, for a group of 15 young participants with normal hearing and a group of 12 older participants with hearing impairment, speech-recognition scores were determined at SRT and at four higher SNRs using several stationary and fluctuating maskers. Participants’ verbal responses were recorded, and participants were asked to self-report their listening effort on a categorical scale (self-reported listening effort, SR-LE). The responses were analyzed using an Automatic Speech Recognizer (ASR) and compared to the results of a human examiner. An intraclass correlation coefficient of r = .993 for the agreement between their corresponding speech-recognition scores was observed. As expected, speech-recognition scores increased with increasing SNR and decreased with increasing SR-LE. However, differences between speech-recognition scores for fluctuating and stationary maskers were observed as a function of SNR, but not as a function of SR-LE. The verbal response time (VRT) and the response speech rate (RSR) of the listeners’ responses were measured using an ASR. The participants with hearing impairment showed significantly lower RSRs and higher VRTs compared to the participants with normal hearing. These differences may be attributed to differences in age, hearing, or both. With increasing SR-LE, VRT increased and RSR decreased. The results show the possibility of deriving a behavioral measure, VRT, measured directly from participants’ verbal responses during speech audiometry, as a proxy for SR-LE.
Trends in hearing Thousand Oaks, Calif. : Sage, 2014 28(2024), Seite 1-20 Online-Ressource
Deutsche Gesellschaft für Audiologie (25. : 2023 : Köln) 25. Jahrestagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Audiologie German Medical Science, GMS, 2023 (2023), Seite 1-4
von Gitte Keidser ; Graham Naylor ; Douglas Brungart ; Andreas Caduff ; Jennifer Campos ; Simon Carlile ; Mark Carpenter ; Giso Grimm ; Volker Hohmann ; Inga Holube ; Stefan Launer ; Thomas Lunner ; Ravish Mehra ; Frances Rapport ; Malcolm Slaney ; Karolina Smeds
