Measuring conversational dynamics to evaluate the effects of speech-perception defecits

Speech perception is essential for successful communication through spoken language, which often involves both speaking and listening by two or more conversation partners. The speech perception abilities of one conversation partner affect the dynamics of the entire conversation, not just the passive speech-recognition performance of that individual. However, speech perception is often evaluated through single-person listening tasks in controlled settings, such as an audiometric booth. While this type of testing can provide insight into an individual's ability to hear and understand speech passively, it is not representative of typical real-world conversations, and it fails to capture the effects of one individual’s speech perception abilities on other conversational participants. This pilot study begins the development and validation of a measure of conversational dynamics for the purpose of evaluating hearing interventions such as hearing aids. Five pairs of conversation partners participated in two experiments. The first involved a series of semi-structured conversation tasks in a controlled laboratory environment. The second involved a naturally occurring conversation in an uncontrolled environment. In both experiments, one conversation partner wore earplugs during half of the experimental trials. Objective and subjective measures of conversational dynamics revealed that the semi-structured laboratory task could serve as an ecologically valid proxy for real-world communication.