Journal Article

The effects of hearing protection devices on spatial awareness in complex listening environments

Snapp, Hillary A., Schaefer-Solle, Natasha, Ausili, Sebastian A., Millet, Barbara, Rajguru, Suhrud M.

2023

Overview

Hearing protection devices (HPDs) remain the first line of defense against hazardous noise exposure and noise-induced hearing loss (NIHL). Despite the increased awareness of NIHL as a major occupational health hazard, implementation of effective hearing protection interventions remains challenging in at-risk occupational groups including those in public safety that provide fire, emergency medical, or law enforcement services. A reduction of situational awareness has been reported as a primary barrier to including HPDs as routine personal protective equipment. This study examined the effects of hearing protection and simulated NIHL on spatial awareness in ten normal hearing subjects. In a sound-attenuating booth and using a head-orientation tracker, speech intelligibility and localization accuracy were collected from these subjects under multiple listening conditions. Results demonstrate that the use of HPDs disrupts spatial hearing as expected, specifically localization performance and monitoring of speech signals. There was a significant interaction between hemifield and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), with speech intelligibility significantly affected when signals were presented from behind at reduced SNR. Results also suggest greater spatial hearing disruption using over-the-ear HPDs when compared to the removal of high frequency cues typically associated with NIHL through low-pass filtering. These results are consistent with reduced situational awareness as a self-reported barrier to routine HPD use, and was evidenced in our study by decreased ability to make accurate decisions about source location in a controlled dual-task localization experiment.

• Publisher: Public Library of Science,Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subject: Accuracy / Auditory Perception / Biology and Life Sciences / Cognition / Cues / Ear protection / Ear Protective Devices / Emergency medical services / Engineering and Technology / Evaluation / Experiments / Fatalities / Health aspects / Health hazards / Hearing / Hearing loss / Hearing Loss, Noise-Induced - prevention & control / Hearing protection / Humans / Intelligibility / Listening / Localization / Low pass filters / Mechanization, Military / Medicine and Health Sciences / Military paraphernalia / Noise / Noise control / Noise levels / Noise, Occupational / Occupational health / Perceptions / Physical Sciences / Protective equipment / Public safety / Receptive field / Risk factors / Safety and security measures / Signal monitoring / Signal to noise ratio / Situational awareness / Social Sciences / Speech / Workers