Appear vs. Disappear sounds Study Protocol for HI Study Motivation Why is Change Detection important? • The performance worsens when sounds are not limited to the front hemisphere and can appear or disappear randomly, as in real life (Figure 8). • Overall performance in the appear trials is significantly better than in the disappear trials (Figure 6). • No significant differences between unaided and aided performance. • Performance for the sound localization in disappear trials was overall the worst. Influence of Sound Position • *No sig. differences were found between two HA processing, except for the sound identification task in diagonal trials including appearing and disappearing sounds (p < .05, r = .51). Experimental Design for HI Study • A mixture of 4 sounds played from the front, back or both hemispheres (Figure 2). • Sounds were randomly chosen out of a pool of 12 everyday sounds (Figure 3). • Continuous scene for 10 sec, a sound appears or disappears after 6 sec. • Listening conditions: Unaided and aided with state-of-the-art HA processing. References: [1] studio4rt (2022). Freepik. https://bitly.ws/37EiK. [2] Brungart, D.S., Cohen, J., Cord, M., Zion, D., Kalluri, S. (2014): Assessment of auditory spatial awareness in complex listening environments. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 136(4), 1808–1820. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.4893932. [3] Kosminski, M., Bilert, S., Serman, M., Hoppe, U. (2022): Experimental paradigm for change detection exploration. SPIN 2023, Split. [4] Ventry, I. M., & Weinstein, B. E. (1982). The Hearing Handicap Inventory for the Elderly: a New Tool. Ear and Hearing, 3(3), 128-134. https://doi.org/10.1097/00003446-198205000-00006. Results Corresponding author: michelle.kosminski@fau.de To appear or to disappear? Investigating change detection in hearing-impaired listeners Conclusions 1WSAudiology, Erlangen, Germany, 2Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg Background Michelle Kosminski1,2, Sascha Bilert1, Maja Serman1, Ulrich Hoppe2 Acknowledgments: Our thanks goes to all listeners who participated in this experiment. Methods To feel safe in a real-life environment we must detect sudden appearing or disappearing sounds. Can hearing aids (HA) help elderly hearing-impaired (HI) with detecting such changes? Let’s test! Subjective Experience • Sig. correlations between aided sound identification and the situational subscore of the HHIE [4]: Subjects who performed worse in the experiment reported more difficulties in everyday life in social settings (back trials: rs = -.56, p < .05; diagonal trials: rs = -.63, p < .05). Figure 1: General example for appear (a) and disappear (b) change detection experiment. Figure 3: Interface for subjects to identify and locate the appearing or disappearing sound. Figure 2: Loudspeaker configurations used in the experiment. Figure 4: Study protocol for the first and second appointment. Grayed-out parts of the protocol are not presented here. HHIE = Hearing Handicap Inventory for the Elderly [4]. [1] For young normal-hearing (NH) listeners it is easier to locate and identify sounds appearing into a mixture in the front hemisphere [2, 3]. (a) (b) Figure 7: Performance for the sound identification task and sound localization task (N = 14). Results for the aided condition are shown for one type of HA processing*. Figure 8: Comparison of Brungart et al. [2] (N = 19, mixture of 2 and 4 sounds) and Kosminski et al. [3] (N = 14, mixture of 4 sounds) for HI participants. Figure 6: Overall performance for appear and disappear trials (N = 14). Results for the aided condition only include one type of (HA) processing. Correlation of aided performance and HHIE situational subscore, points towards the relevance of change detection in real life of HI listeners. • N = 14 (4 female, 10 male) • Age range: 21 – 85 years (M = 59.4 years) • HI with mild to severe symmetrical hearing loss (Figure 5) • PTA: 27.5 – 63.75 dB HL (M = 49.24 dB HL) Participants Figure 5