Head-orienting behaviors during simultaneous speech detection and localization

Head movement plays a vital role in auditory processing by contributing to spatial awareness and the ability to identify and locate sound sources. Here we investigate head-orienting behaviors using a dual-task experimental paradigm to measure: (a) localization of a speech source; and (b) detection of meaningful speech (numbers), within a complex acoustic background. Ten younger adults with normal hearing and 20 older adults with mild-to-severe sensorineural hearing loss were evaluated in the free field on two head-movement conditions: (1) head fixed to the front and (2) head moving to a source location; and two context conditions: (1) with audio only or (2) with audio plus visual cues. Head-tracking analyses quantified the target location relative to head location, as well as the peak velocity during head movements. Evaluation of head-orienting behaviors revealed that both groups tended to undershoot the auditory target for targets beyond 60° in azimuth. Listeners with hearing loss had higher head-turn errors than the normal-hearing listeners, even when a visual location cue was provided. Digit detection accuracy was better for the normal-hearing than hearing-loss groups, with a main effect of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). When performing the dual-task paradigm in the most difficult listening environments, participants consistently demonstrated a wait-and-listen head-movement strategy, characterized by a short pause during which they maintained their head orientation and gathered information before orienting to the target location.