Article
Spatial Audiomotor Perceptual Training in Virtual Reality to Enhance Speech Intelligibility in Noise (en)
* Presenting author
Abstract:
Understanding speech in noise is one of the most common complaints of people with hearing impairments. However, recent studies suggest that auditory training based on sensorimotor learning tasks can contribute to significant improvements in sensory perception that can even generalize to speech recognition tasks with untrained stimuli. These findings inspired us to develop a virtual reality application that provides an immersive, gamified, and multisensory approach to auditory training using state-of-the-art headphone-based dynamic binaural rendering and a consumer-grade head-mounted display. Players are challenged to search for hidden auditory targets by navigating through an open play area. Using spatial hearing, their task is to locate a faint sound embedded in masking multi-talker babble by actively monitoring the changes in auditory feedback generated by a closed loop between their motor actions and the resulting sounds. The signal-to-noise ratio is dynamically adjusted over the course of training depending on the player's performance. We present preliminary results of an interventional psychoacoustic study to determine whether a) participants can improve their efficiency in the closed-loop auditory foraging task through training, and b) whether learning in the context of an auditory foraging game can generalize to improvements in an untrained speech recognition test in competing noise.