- In this video, I'm talking about how body movement
can impact your hearing ability
in a complex listening environment.
Coming up.
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Hi, guys.
Cliff Olson, Doctor of Audiology and
founder of Applied Hearing Solutions in Phoenix, Arizona.
And on this channel,
I cover a bunch of hearing related information
to help make you a better informed consumer.
So if you're into that,
make sure you hit that subscribe button.
and don't forget to click the bell to receive a notification
every time I post a new video.
Hearing does not happen in a static environment.
The majority of hearing aid users,
are constantly moving from environment to environment,
requiring their hearing aid settings to change
based on the environment that they're in.
Let me give you an example.
If you're sitting in a restaurant,
at a table with family and friends,
it is likely that you would prefer
the hearing aids to be picking up the speech of the person
that you're facing,
because that's likely the person that you're talking to
in that particular situation.
Now, if you get up and leave that table
when you're finished eating
and you're walking out to your car,
but it's still have some noise around You,
you don't want the hearing aids to be focused directly
in front of you, you probably want them to pick up
the speech of the person who's walking next to you
and talking.
In general, hearing aids will usually treat these situations
one of two different ways.
And, the first way is to use directionality.
This is where the hearing aids orient the pickup range
of the microphones usually in front of you.
So, it primarily amplifies those sounds
that you're looking at
and not necessarily as much of those sounds
that are around you.
The second way that hearing aids address
these listening situations,
is to allow for amplification from 360 degrees.
This prevents you from having to turn your head in the
direction of the person that you want to hear,
but it does allow insignificantly more sound
from all the way around you.
However, one of the biggest issues
that hearing aids run into
is that when you get into these complex listening situations
where the noise levels are reaching a certain decibel level,
it forces the hearing aids into this directional mode,
when you may not necessarily want
to be in the directional mode.
While this may not seem like a huge problem on the surface,
it could create a situation where you don't necessarily
want to hear the sound that's directly in front of you
if you're in a noisy situation.
I mean, just imagine if you're walking across a busy street,
the busy street can be loud,
but you don't necessarily want
to hear the things directly in front of you.
You wanna hear things from all the way around you.
This directionality can end up resulting in you,
not hearing the person that you want to hear
unless you actually turn your head to face them.
But this problem is exactly what Signia,
today's video sponsor, is trying to fix with
their new Xperience line of hearing devices.
Signia is the first hearing aid manufacturer
to utilize motion sensors
to manipulate microphone directionality,
to maximize hearing performance in complex situations.
In nearly all cases, our listening intent is different
when we're moving compared to when we're standing still.
The motion sensors inside of the Xperience line of devices
not only detect movement
but it uses this information to make better decisions
on how to process sound around you.
These sensors conduct three dimensional measurements
every 0.5 milliseconds
to assist the signal classification process
of experience hearing aids
which allows the hearing aid wearer to hear better
when you are moving,
and when you're staying still.
This helps to prevent
against the problem
that I was explaining before
that I like to call the Blinder Effect.
This is when directionality of hearing aids forces you to
only hear things from in front of you.
Like if you were to have blinders on.
So imagine that you're once again in that restaurant
with your family and friends around a table.
Given the limited motion
and the other acoustical information in that environment,
your Signia hearing aids would be able to switch you
into the best program settings
for that particular situation.
Like with Signia's narrow directionality
which has been proven to be extremely effective
in complex listening situations
to improve speech intelligibility.
Now, imagine that you get up from that table
and you're walking out of that restaurant again
but instead of staying in that
very narrow directionality mode,
it actually relaxes the directionality
so you can hear the person
that you're walking next to.
In a recent article in the Hearing Review,
the use of motion sensors in Signia Xperience devices,
improved perceived speech understanding
and reduced listening effort
in environments that simulated walking
along a busy street with traffic noise.
It also indicated that 88% of Signia Xperience device users
reported satisfaction for speech understanding
in the same type of situation in the real world.
These motion sensors combined
with Signia's new processing strategy
in the Xperience line of devices
have the opportunity to dramatically improve
how well you can hear in a complex situation,
especially if that situation involves movement.
The integrated motion sensors complement
the acoustic sensors which helped to drive
the proven directional microphones
of the Signia devices.
And, they also help to improve the Own Voice Processing,
which helps your own voice sound more natural to yourself.
Hearing better in a noisy complex listening environment
is the goal of nearly every hearing aid user
that I have ever met.
But it requires hearing aid technology
that can quickly sense your acoustic environment
and how you're interacting within it
and manipulate your hearing devices optimally
for that particular situation.
So the next time that you're considering
new hearing aid technology,
I want you to think about all the times that you're moving
from complex environment to complex environment
and if having hearing aids that can sense
that change are right for you.
That's it for this video.
If you have any questions,
leave them in the comments section below.
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please share it.
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just like this one,
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Also feel free to check out my website, drcliffaud.com.
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