Auditory Performance of Individuals with Reduced Hearing Capability in Virtual Reality Environment
(Room S320A)
28 Nov 17
2:00 PM
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2:30 PM
The effort to apply Virtual Reality (VR) technology to advance the fields of medicine, education, engineering, and entertainment is currently underway. The military uses VR to carry out training such as aircraft maintenance or virtual war scenarios. Despite important progress made in display technologies, a complete immersion in VR space is not possible without an auditory representation of the simulated environment. Sound is important in an immersive virtual environment because it enhances the sense of presence (Freeman, Lessiter, 2001) and improves situational awareness by providing feedback for situations that are not in the listener’s field of view (Kukka et al., 2016). Additionally, the degree of presence experienced by an individual affects the performance of the training tasks (Stevens, Kincaid, 2015).
In order to synthesize a functional auditory environment, it is important to obtain a better understanding of how ears receive and process sound. To assess human training performance, it is essential to understand how the perception of the simulated sound environment is impaired for individuals with reduced hearing capability, which can be caused either by natural factors (e.g., age-related hearing loss [presbycusis]) or by external agents (e.g., noise-induced hearing loss). This paper provides a literature review for identifying limitations in auditory perception for individuals with sensorineural hearing loss (SHL). We reviewed hearing impairments due to SHL, which will likely affect auditory performance in a virtual environment. Using an ecological approach to explain the relationship between hearing impairments and auditory demands, we analyzed how this relationship affects human training performance. Finally, we provide guidelines to effectively design and implement VR environments, while taking into account human auditory performance, including individuals with reduced hearing capability.