ISCA Archive SpeechProsody 2014
ISCA Archive SpeechProsody 2014

Evaluation of bone-conducted ultrasonic hearing-aid regarding transmission of speaker gender and age information

Takayuki Kagomiya, Seiji Nakagawa

Human listeners can perceive speech signals in a voicemodulated ultrasonic carrier from a bone-conduction stimulator, even if the listeners are patients with sensorineural hearing loss. Considering this fact, we have been developing a bone-conducted ultrasonic hearing aid (BCUHA). The purpose of this study was to assess the usefulness of the BCUHA in transmission of speakers’ physical attributes: gender and age. The evaluation used gender and age-identification experiments. The experiments were also conduced under air-conduction (AC) and cochlear implant simulator (CIsim) conditions. The results showed that: the BCUHA can well transmit speakers’ gender information; the BCUHA can transmit speaker age information better than CIsim.