Evaluation of bone-conducted ultrasonic hearing-aid regarding transmission of paralinguistic information: a comparison with cochlear implant simulator

Human listeners can perceive speech signals in a voicemodulated ultrasonic carrier from a bone-conduction stimulator, even if the listeners are patients with sensorineural hearing loss. Considering this fact, we have been developing a bone-conducted ultrasonic hearing aid (BCUHA). The purpose of this study is to evaluate the usability of BCUHA regarding transmission of paralinguistic information. For this purpose, two series of listening experiments were conducted. One is a speaker’s intention identification experiment, the other is a speaker discrimination experiment. To compare performance of BCUHA to that of air-conduction (AC) and cochlear implant, both experiments were conducted under three conditions; BCUHA, AC, and cochlear implant simulator (CIsim). The results show that BCUHA can transmit intentions of speaker as well as CIsim. Also BCUHA can transmit speaker information better than CIsim.

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