Hearing aids do not change affective valence perception but do alter arousal perception

Evidence

For arousal, mean intensity was found to be a strong cue for arousal rating (β= 6.606 × 10‑2 , SE = 1.528 × 10‑2 , p < 0.001): higher intensity was associated with higher ratings of arousal in the aided and unaided conditions. Moreover, arousal ratings were generally higher in the aided condition than in the unaided condition (mapped on the intercept) (β= 7.156 × 10‑2 , SE = 2.089 × 10‑2 , p < 0.001). Significant interactions between listening condition and articulation rate (β = 3.012 × 10‑2 , SE = 1.421 × 10‑2 , p < 0.05) and listening condition and vocal effort (β = 1.459 × 10‑2 , SE = 3.949 × 10‑3 , p < 0.001) were observed: while vocal effort and articulation rate did not influence ratings in the unaided condition, their effects were larger in the aided condition. In the unaided condition, those with poorer hearing had lower ratings (β = ‑9.772 × 10‑3 , SE = 4.093 × 10‑3 , p < 0.05) than those with better hearing, but this was less the case in the aided condition (β = 7.063 × 10‑3 , SE = 2.459 × 10‑3 , p < 0.01). This suggests that wearing the hearing aid made the rating patterns of poorer and better-hearing participants more alike. Furthermore, those with poorer hearing associated increases in F0 (β = 6.093 × 10‑5 , SE = 2.094 × 10‑5 , p < 0.01) and in articulation rate (β = 1.833 × 10‑3 , SE = 8.952 × 10‑4 , p < 0.05) more with higher arousal than those with better hearing across listening conditions. This suggests that, among the hearing aid users, those with poorer hearing used additional prosodic cues compared to those with relatively good hearing. … For valence, a significant simple effect of mean F0 (β = ‑4.813 × 10‑3 , SE = 8.856 × 10‑4 , p < 0.001) was found: higher pitch was associated with lower ratings, i.e., more negative ratings. None of the other acoustic parameters was predictive of the valence ratings. Moreover, importantly, no effects for listening condition and hearing loss were observed: valence ratings were independent of whether the participants wore their hearing aids or not and were independent of individual hearing loss. — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 1368

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s interest in how degraded auditory access (hearing loss) changes weighting of prosodic cues — links to general psychoacoustic work on cue weighting in speech perception.