How do hearing aids affect spatial hearing (Virgina Best, Boston Univ., USA)

It has long been known that hearing aids can disrupt sound localization, interfering with both left-right and front-back discrimination. Recent work from our group has extended these findings to show that hearing aids can also disrupt sound externalization, leading to sound images that are too close or even inside the head. Importantly, disrupted spatial perception has consequences for speech tasks that involve spatial attention to a talker of interest. In this talk I will describe a series of studies designed to understand and quantify these effects. I will also describe our ongoing work that is investigating sound localization, sound externalization, and spatial attention in a new generation of “over-the-counter” hearing aids.