As part of the National Acoustic Laboratories (NAL) “Soundbites Webinar Series,” Dr Joaquin Valderrama-Valenzuela will present “Towards the Measurement of Listening Effort in a Clinic Environment” on July 8 at 12:30 PM, Sydney, Australia time (GMT+10). The Soundbites series includes short webinars with presentations by NAL researchers followed by a Q&A; webinar recordings will be uploaded to the NAL YouTube channel one week after the live event.

Dr Joaquin Valderrama-Valenzuela

“Towards the Measurement of Listening Effort in a Clinic Environment”

Have you ever had a client complaining about the extra effort that they need to dedicate to follow a conversation? This is a serious concern that can severely affect their quality of life, as this extra effort can lead to situations in which listeners end the conversation exhausted (thus reducing part of the enjoyment of a conversation), or simply giving up—increasing the risk of social isolation. These hearing difficulties are difficult to evaluate in a clinical environment, as they do not become evident from an audiogram. 

What we have done at NAL is to develop a new methodology sensitive to the effort required to understand a message in a challenging scenario. In fact, this methodology is currently being used to evaluate whether some advanced features of hearing aids (like directionality) actually reduce the cognitive load of their wearers. We anticipate that the results of this research will help clinicians provide more informed recommendations to their clients.

In my talk, I will present this methodology in detail, and I will discuss its potential in a clinical environment as a tool to objectively measure the extent in which a client struggles in following a conversation in a noisy scenario.

About Joaquin:

Joaquin is a Research Scientist at the NAL in the Engineering Department. He has two Bachelor of Science degrees in Telecommunication Engineering and Business Administration from the European University of Madrid (Spain, 2008), a Master of Science in Multimedia Technologies from the University of Granada (Spain, 2010), a Specialist Diploma in Audiology from the University of Salamanca (Spain, 2015), and a PhD from the University of Granada (Spain, 2014).

His main research fields of interest include analysis of brain responses in different recording conditions, signal processing methods for artifact rejection and neural response detection, and cognition.

To register for the free event, please click here.

Source: NAL

Image: NAL