The benefit of speech enhancement to the hearing impaired

Decreased speech intelligibility in background noise is a common complaint of most hearing impaired in comparison to quiet conditions. Speech enhancement algorithms widely used in hearing aids are often used with some success to improve speech intelligibility for the hearing impaired. It is eminent from the literature that not all hearing impaired benefit from speech enhancement algorithms. From the literature it is not clear whether speech enhancement techniques are useful to either normal hearing or hearing impaired. Our results have shown a trend that with the assistance of speech enhancement techniques and an ear model comprising outer-hair cell functionality, the speech intelligibility of normal hearing becomes worse as the signal-to-noise ratio is lowered. In a similar task, hearing impaired, particularly those who use cochlear implants have shown a significant improvement in speech intelligibility.