China
Africa
Explore chapters and articles related to this topic
Gerontechnology: Optimising relationships between ageing people and changing technology
Published in V. Minichiello, I. Coulson, Contemporary Issues in Gerontology, 2012
Gerontechnology broadens the scope of development of specific technology on ageing. The goals of prevention and enhancement are not usually considered in research on medical rehabilitation or care. For example, it has been proposed to use digital hearing aid technology to determine the long-term effects of noise on age-associated hearing loss as well as to reduce its effects (Fozard 2001). The unique applications of technology in artistic activities described by Bouma and Herrington (2000) derive directly from the use of enhancement described above. The idea of using smart or self-adaptive technology in the control devices for technology-based products is being considered as a way to simplify user interfaces by customisation of the controls to the unique preferences and needs of individual users.
A novel design of low-cost hearing aid devices using an efficient lifting filter bank with a modified variable filter
Published in Expert Review of Medical Devices, 2022
N Subbulakshmi, R Manimegalai, G Rajakumar, T Ananth Kumar, Umadevi Kosuri
Answers to all the above questions lead to different types of filter bank techniques. Another essential part of the digital hearing aid device is the peripheral auditory system. The input signal is passed through the filter bank of the hearing aid and peripheral auditory system before reaching the brainstem. Based on the literature findings, it is observed that the proposed novel lifting-based filter bank (NLFB) design has some of the issues such as power consumption, area occupation, and more delay. In order to address these issues, the proposed NLFB method plans to contribute the following: The proposed design has reasonable power consumption and less area occupation because of the modified variable recursive structure comparing to interpolated filter bank.Lifting algorithm decides the number of sublevels of the algorithm that determines the hardware design complexity.Advantages of both modified recursive filter and lifting algorithm delivers high speed in the signal processing system of the hearing aid device.Noise reduction is also an important factor in enhancing the speech signal quality over the noisy environment in the hearing aid devices. Hence, the proposed system is suitable for those kinds of problems.
Speech intelligibility benefits of frequency-lowering algorithms in adult hearing aid users: a systematic review and meta-analysis
Published in International Journal of Audiology, 2018
Andrea Simpson, Alicia Bond, Michelle Loeliger, Sandy Clarke
In order to identify relevant studies, the following inclusion criteria were developed:Studies had to be published in English, as a reliable translation was not available.Studies had to be published from the year 2000 onwards. This year was decided as the first all-digital hearing aid was commercially available in 1996 (Levitt 2007). This ensured that the review evaluated FL technology relevant to more modern devices.Studies had to objectively compare either non-linear FC or FT to conventional processing using a measure of speech intelligibility testing as an outcome tool.Studies had to include adult hearing-impaired participants with adult classified as 18 years of age and over. If studies reported on both adults and children then participants younger than 18 years of age were excluded from the analysis. Studies using normally-hearing participants under simulation conditions and/or children were excluded from review.
Temporal characteristics of stop consonants in pediatric cochlear implant users
Published in Cochlear Implants International, 2019
From the above studies, it can be concluded that the speech characteristics of children using digital hearing aids and those using cochlear implants are different. Hence the areas to be focused on these children during speech therapy services would be different when compared to the digital hearing aid users. Studies on speech characteristics of children with digital hearing aids are abundant in the literature (Gilbert and Campbell, 1978; McGarr and Lofquist, 1982; Monsen, 1979; Ryalls et al., 2003). There is a dearth of such studies on children using CI, at least in Indian languages. Also, earlier investigations have shown that the acoustic speech characteristics vary across languages. Malayalam is a Dravidian language primarily spoken in Kerala, a southern state in India. It has unique phonological characteristics with five stop places of articulation including bilabial, dental, alveolar, retroflex and velar (Asher and Kumari, 1997). Also, stops are the consonants with the highest frequency of occurrence in Malayalam (Sreedevi and Irfana, 2013). In the recent past, there is a steady increase in the number of beneficiaries in Kerala state due to government schemes like ‘Shruthitharangam1’ which provides financial assistance for cochlear implants for children with HI less than five years of age. In this context, systematic studies on the acoustic characteristics of speech in children using CI who are speakers of Malayalam needs to be carried out for a better understanding of their speech characteristics which might go unnoticed during the perceptual assessment. This, in turn, will aid speech-language pathologists (SLPs) to select appropriate goals for intervention programs. Hence the current study aims to investigate the temporal characteristics of stop consonants in Malayalam speaking children using the cochlear implant.