NCT06691087

Sound Perception Study of Hearing-impaired People With Hearing Aids

ÉTude de la pERception soNorE de Personnes maLentendantes équipées d'Aides Auditives

• Status: Recruiting
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 75 (estimated)
• Sponsor: Institut Pasteur · Industry
• Sex: All
• Age: 60 Years – 75 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

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.

Conditions

• Auditory Perception

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	Influence of the parameters of the sound timbre on the perception of a sound	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.
BEHAVIORAL	Complex sound scene comprehension test	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.
BEHAVIORAL	Complex sound scene comprehension test with hearing aids	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.

Timeline

• Start date: 2025-04-22
• Primary completion: 2026-11-01
• Completion: 2028-11-01
• First posted: 2024-11-15
• Last updated: 2026-03-31

Locations

1 site across 1 country: France