A contralateral routing of signals hearing aid or a bone conduction hearing aid can be used to route signals arriving at the deaf ear to the normal-hearing (NH) ear via air or bone conduction, respectively. To date, individuals with permanent SSD have limited treatment options. Severe to profound unilateral hearing loss in children may present them with particular difficulties in general group activities, leading to delays in development of speech and language, and affecting their academic performance and educational progress ( Bess & Tharpe 1986 Tharpe & Sladen 2008). Such difficulties may lead to significant communication handicaps that compromise the quality of life of these unilaterally hearing-impaired individuals ( Noble & Gatehouse 2004 Wie et al. When speech and background noise are presented at the same level, individuals with SSD hear only about 30% to 35% of the conversation ( Christensen et al. Individuals with a single-sided deafness (SSD), who have severe to profound hearing loss in one ear and normal or near-normal hearing in the other ear, experience difficulty understanding speech in background noise ( McLeod et al. ![]() Thus, these advantages reflected the additional use of the experimentally constrained left ear and were not attributable to better-ear listening. The advantages of binaural integration were calculated by comparing binaural performance with monaural performance using the CI-simulation ear alone. The SNRs ensured that the monaural performance of the left ear never exceeded that of the CI-simulation ear. ![]() The ability to report key words in sentences was assessed under monaural and binaural listening conditions and at signal to noise ratios (SNRs) established by estimating speech-reception thresholds in each ear alone. Finally, a Shifted strategy imposed a similar degree of misalignment in all channels, resulting in consistent mismatch between the ears across frequency. A Realistic strategy created a misalignment in the mapping of frequency to place in the CI-simulation ear where the size of the mismatch between the ears varied across channels. An Ideal strategy simulated a frequency-to-place map across all channels that matched the delivery of spectral information between the ears. Stimuli presented to the right ear (referred to as the CI-simulation ear) were processed using an eight-channel noise vocoder with one of the three processing strategies. ![]() Stimuli presented to the left ear were unprocessed. Eight NH volunteers participated in the study and listened to sentences embedded in background noise via headphones.
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