To evaluate the efficacy of the cued-listening task (CLT) in the evaluation of binaural hearing aid performance, we tested 10 experienced binaural hearing aid users. Subjects listened for a speech target embedded in continuous discourse from either the right or left directions while simultaneously suppressing similar continuous discourse from the other direction. The task was carried out in the...

Three important aspects of binaural hearing, namely: directionality, the "squelching" of reverberations, and markedly increased speech intelligibility, were all mentioned in anecdotal fashion by Koenig on the basis of some observations he made with an artificial head, two microphones, and two earphones. A Y-cord arrangement, with one microphone feeding" two earphones, or the outputs from two mi...

Three important aspects of binaural hearing, namely: directionality, the "squelching" of reverberations, and markedly increased speech intelligibility, were all mentioned in anecdotal fashion by Koenig on the basis of some observations he made with an artificial head, two microphones, and two earphones. A Y-cord arrangement, with one microphone feeding" two earphones, or the outputs from two mi...

Interaural time difference (ITD) arises whenever a sound outside of the median plane arrives at the two ears. There is evidence that ITD in the rapidly varying fine structure of a sound is most important for sound localization and for understanding speech in noise. Cochlear implants (CIs), neural prosthetic devices that restore hearing in the profoundly deaf, are increasingly implanted to both ...

A meta-analytic approach was used to examine sixteen peer-reviewed publications related to speech-recognition performance in noise at fixed signal-to-noise ratios for participants who use bilateral cochlear implants (CIs) or bimodal stimulation. Two hundred eighty-seven analyses were conducted to compare the underlying contributions of binaural summation, binaural squelch, and the head-shadow e...

The use of bone-anchored hearing aids is not possible for all patients who wear an implant-retained auricular prosthesis. For some patients, the external ear canal cannot be occluded with a conventional hearing device. Currently manufactured hearing aids may not readily fit the contours of an implant-retained auricular prosthesis. This article describes a technique that allows a modular hearing...

Multi-microphone noise reduction algorithms in binaural hearing aids which cooperate through a wireless link have the potential to become of great importance in future hearing aid systems. However, limited transmission capacity of such devices necessitates the data compression of signals transmitted from one hearing aid to the contralateral one. In this paper we study the impact of quantization...

Little is known about the perception of artificial spatial hearing by hearing-impaired subjects. The purpose of this study was to investigate how listeners with hearing disorders perceived the effect of a spatialization feature designed for wireless microphone systems. Forty listeners took part in the experiments. They were arranged in four groups: normal-hearing, moderate, severe, and profound...