A Proposed Speech Discrimination Assessment Methodology Based on Event-Related Potentials to Visual Stimuli

Abstract

Objective and quantitative assessment methods are needed for the fitting of hearing aid parameters. This paper proposes a novel speech discrimination assessment method using electroencephalograms (EEGs). The method utilizes event-related potentials (ERPs) to visual stimuli instead of the conventionally used auditory stimuli. A spoken letter is played through a speaker as an initial auditory stimulus. The same letter can then be visually displayed on a screen as a match condition, or a different letter is displayed (mismatch condition). The participant determines whether the two stimuli represent the same letter or not. The P3 component or late positive potential (LPP) component are elicited when a participant detects either a match or mismatch between the auditory and visual stimuli, respectively. The hearing ability of each participant can be estimated objectively via analysis of these ERP components.