Join us for a special seminar with Dr. Ewen McDonald on the evaluation of hearing-aid signal processing.
Dr. Ewen MacDonald
Ewen MacDonald's research expertise is in hearing, speech perception and production, and hearing-assistive devices. In his Ph.D., he investigated the consequences of the loss of temporal synchrony on speech intelligibility in noise. After graduating from the University of Toronto, he moved to Queen's University and investigated the role of auditory feedback on control of speech production. This work examined how talkers changed their speech when the acoustic feedback they received was altered in real-time. In 2011, Ewen moved to Copenhagen to take a faculty position at the Technical University of Denmark. There he continued his research into the perceptual consequences of hearing loss and how they can be addressed by hearing assistive devices.
Abstract:
Traditionally, the evaluation of hearing aid (HA) signal processing has focused on measures of speech intelligibility. However, these measures are most sensitive when intelligibility is around 50%, which is not representative of the conditions in which HAs will normally be used. Thus, new metrics are needed to better assess HA benefit in realistic situations. In many conditions, a listener with hearing loss may be able to achieve the same speech intelligibility performance as that of a listener with normal hearing. However, it is likely that the listener with hearing loss will need to exert more effort to achieve that performance. Thus, being able to measure listening effort, particularly during interactive conversation, is important for evaluating the potential benefit of new HA algorithms and features. This talk will present the results from a several studies that investigate how acoustic measures of speech production and eye-related measures, such as pupillometry, can be used to assess listening effort during conversation.
Attending this seminar will count towards the graduate student seminar attendance milestone!
This seminar is sponsored by:
