Health TrialsbyHealthPanel

Sound Perception Study of Hearing-impaired People With Hearing Aids

ConditionAuditory Perception
Trial statusRecruiting
Trial phaseNot applicable
Trial typeInterventional
Biological sexAll
Age60-75
SponsorInstitut Pasteur

About this trial

The aim of the ETERNEL project will be to study the influence of the perception of a single sound timbre on the understanding of a complex sound scene in hearing-impaired people with hearing aids. This will be done by quantifying the inability to manage a complex sound scene as a function of the timbre of the sounds making it up. The more a sound interferes with understanding the complex sound scene, the more salient that sound is considered to be. In this way, the investigators can determine which timbre dimensions make sounds particularly salient for the hearing impaired.

Eligibility criteria

This trial accepts healthy volunteers

Qualifiers

Age between 60 and 75

Native French speaker

Have given their consent to take part in the study.

Declare that they have an active social life or hobbies that stimulate their cognitive abilities

Disqualifiers

Be under guardianship or curatorship,

Be deprived of liberty by judicial or administrative decision, or be under legal protection.

Bear the consequences of an ear infection and/or have a history of an ENT disease that permanently affects hearing or balance (vestibular schwannoma, Ménière's disease, sudden or fluctuating deafness, congenital hypoacusis).

Trial design

Design model

Parallel

Treatments tested in this trial

  • Influence of the parameters of the sound timbre on the perception of a sound

    Behavioral

    The experiment consists of evaluating the sound level of n complex stimuli, then equalising them in loudness, in order to measure a loudness curve in function of timbre descriptors. The stimuli will then be listened to again in pairs. The task is there to compare the stimuli using a VAS to indicate how different the two sounds are.

  • Complex sound scene comprehension test

    Behavioral

    The experiment consists in identifying the parameters of the sound timbre that most disturb the understanding of complex sound scenes, by asking the participants to identify sounds whose timbre has been modified.

  • Complex sound scene comprehension test with hearing aids

    Behavioral

    The experiment will be identical to intervention 2. This time, the modification of the stimulus timbres will focus on the most problematic dimensional modifications, i.e. those where the difference between normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners is greatest. We will then modify the signal processing parameters of the hearing aid simulator (for example, the size of the averaging window or the gain balance of the filters), to observe their impact on the salience of certain stimuli.

Treatment groups

75 Participants
are divided into 2 treatment groups
Group A: Normal Hearing participantsActive comparator 2 interventions
Group B: Hearing-impaired with hearing aidsExperimental treatment 3 interventions

Trial outcomes

Primary outcomes

1

Percentage of correct answers in melody comparison tasks in the hearing-impaired group compared with the normal-hearing group,

Time frame
3-hours

Secondary outcomes

1

Characterisation of the dissimilarity between pairs of stimuli measured by a continuous perceptual scale

Continuous perceptual scale ranging from very dissimilar to very similar

Time frame
3-hours
2

Evaluation of the perceived loudness level of a set of stimuli, measured using scales of magnitude.

11-point Likert scale

Time frame
3-hours
3

Comparison between the results of speech audiometry in noise, i.e number of words correctly repeated, with native settings versus settings minimising the discomfort of salient sounds for each participant with hearing loss.

the comparison will focus on the number of words correctly repeated on the 1st visit (with native settings) versus the last visit (with settings minimising the discomfort)

Time frame
up to 24 months

Other outcomes

Sponsors and contacts

Click on the lead sponsor to view all of their trials.

Institut Pasteur

Lead sponsor

Institut de l'Audition

Collaborator

Source ClinicalTrials.gov
Apply now