Auditory and visual orienting responses in listeners with and without hearing-impairment

Brimijoin, W. O., McShefferty, D. and Akeroyd, M.A. (2010) Auditory and visual orienting responses in listeners with and without hearing-impairment. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 127(6), pp. 3678-3688. (doi: 10.1121/1.3409488)

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Abstract

Head movements are intimately involved in sound localization and may provide information that could aid an impaired auditory system. Using an infrared camera system, head position and orientation was measured for 17 normal-hearing and 14 hearing-impaired listeners seated at the center of a ring of loudspeakers. Listeners were asked to orient their heads as quickly as was comfortable toward a sequence of visual targets, or were blindfolded and asked to orient toward a sequence of loudspeakers playing a short sentence. To attempt to elicit natural orienting responses, listeners were not asked to reorient their heads to the 0 degrees loudspeaker between trials. The results demonstrate that hearing-impairment is associated with several changes in orienting responses. Hearing-impaired listeners showed a larger difference in auditory versus visual fixation position and a substantial increase in initial and fixation latency for auditory targets. Peak velocity reached roughly 140 degrees/s in both groups, corresponding to a rate of change of approximately 1 mu s of interaural time difference per millisecond of time. Most notably, hearing-impairment was associated with a large change in the complexity of the movement, changing from smooth sigmoidal trajectories to ones characterized by abruptly changing velocities, directional reversals, and frequent fixation angle corrections.

Item Type:Articles
Keywords:AID BRAIN cognition CUES GAZE SHIFTS HEAD MOVEMENTS hearing INCREASE LOCALIZATION NOISE PERFORMANCE POSITION RESPONSES Scotland SENTENCES SEQUENCE SOUND-LOCALIZATION SPEECH SYSTEM TARGETS TRIAL trials vision
Status:Published
Refereed:Yes
Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID:Brimijoin, Dr William and Akeroyd, Dr Michael
Authors: Brimijoin, W. O., McShefferty, D., and Akeroyd, M.A.
College/School:College of Medical Veterinary and Life Sciences
Journal Name:Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
ISSN:0001-4966

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