Understanding how we communicate in the real world

While hearing aids provide many benefits, there are certain environments in which their performance could be improved.  Real conversations depend on the talker, the environment, and the listener.  We study speech recognition using heterogeneous test materials with talkers that vary in intelligibility, accent, and linguistic structure; and in situations with realistic reverberation and/or noise. Our work in this area aims to understand how real-world factors interact with hearing aid processing as well as how hearing aid processing can be improved to cope in these everyday listening environments.

For more on this topic, read our recent paper on listening to accented speech in noise.

Get Involved

Our research is conducted with and for individuals with hearing loss, who generously offer their time and experiences.

We are grateful to have ongoing support for our work from the National Institute on Deafness and other Communication Disorders.