• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SC
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• v.45 no.5
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• pp.13-20
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• 2008

Although digital hearing aid algorithms have been developed to compensate hearing loss and to help hearing impaired people to communicate with others, digital hearing aid user still complain about difficulty of hearing the speech. The reason could be the quality of speech through digital hearing aid is insufficient to understand the speech caused by feedback, residual noise and etc. And another thing is masking effect among formants that makes sound quality low. In this study, we measured the masking characteristics of normal listeners and hearing impaired listeners having presbyacusis to confirm masking effect in speech itself. The experiment is composed of 5 tests; pure tone test, speech reception threshold (SRT) test, word recognition score (WRS) test, puretone masking test and speech masking test. In speech masking test, there are 25 speeches in each speech set. And log likelihood ratio (LLR) is introduced to evaluate the distortion of each speech objectively. As a result, the speech perception became lower by increasing the quantity of formant enhancement. And each enhanced speech in a speech set has statistically similar LLR, however speech perception is not. It means that acoustic masking effect rather than distortion influences speech perception. In actuality, according to the result of frequency analysis of the speech that people can not answer correctly, level difference between first formant and second formant is about 35dB, and it is similar to result of pure tone masking test(normal hearing subject:36.36dB, hearing impaired subject:32.86dB). Characteristics of masking effect is not similar between normal listeners and hearing impaired listeners. So it is required to check the characteristics of masking effect before wearing a hearing aid and to apply this characteristics to fitting.

• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.374-385
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• 2012

The indoor noise of a ship is usually determined using the A-weighted sound pressure level. However, in order to better understand this phenomenon, evaluation parameters that more accurately reflect the human sense of hearing are required. To find the level of the satisfaction index of the noise inside a naval vessel such as "Loudness" and "Annoyance", psycho-acoustic evaluation of various sound recordings from the naval vessel was performed in a laboratory. The objective of this paper is to develop a single index of "Loudness" and "Annoyance" for noise inside a naval vessel according to a psycho-acoustic evaluation by using psychological responses such as Noise Rating (NR), Noise Criterion (NC), Room Criterion (RC), Preferred Speech Interference Level (PSIL) and loudness level. Additionally, in order to determine a single index of satisfaction for noise such as "Loudness" and "Annoyance", with respect to a human's sense of hearing, a back-propagation neural network is applied.

• The Journal of the Acoustical Society of Korea
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• v.39 no.1
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• pp.57-63
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• 2020

The binaural beat is a subjective beating phenomenon due to the frequency difference of sounds heard in both ears, sensed by the human brain. The beating magnitude physically depends on the amplitudes of the two signals with slight different frequencies. Therefore, the binaural beat strength is expected to be affected by the difference in left and right hearing ability. In this study, 34 healthy subjects without hearing loss were chosen. They hear a pure tone sound (450 Hz) at 10 different Sound Pressure Levels (SPLs) (from 50 dB to 27.4 dB) through the one side of ears, while they hear the reference sound (440 Hz, 50 dB) through the other side of ears. Their subjective assessment using a semantic differential method reveals that the binaural beat strength decreases as SPL differences between the two sides of ears increases, if the difference is greater than 2.2 dB. The result suggests that the hearing loss difference between the two sides of ears should be less than 2.2 dB to maximize binaural beating effects.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.54 no.3
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• pp.138-144
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• 2017

In this paper, we propose a high frequency boosting circuits compensating for age-related hearing loss. The frequency response of this hearing loss is quite similar to that of a low-pass filter of which the critical frequency get lower with age. Therefore the voltage gain of this compensation circuits increase proportionally to the frequency of signals when the frequency is higher than the critical frequency and the voltage is constant irrespective of the frequency of signals when the frequency is lower than the critical frequency. The proposed circuits consist of a differential circuit and a unity gain amplifier. Because the critical frequency of the proposed circuits is controlled simply in the shape of a volume control lever, the aged people can adjust the high frequency boosting level easily according to one's hearing loss level. The critical frequency is continuously controllable in the whole audible frequency band and the gain of this high frequency boosting circuits is above 80dB at 10kHz.

• Journal of Digital Contents Society
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.43-50
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• 2016

The purpose of the study is to identify the usability of OpenCouresWare(OCW) from the perspective of students with visual and hearing impairments. Twelve college students with disabilities(8 visual and 4 hearing impairment) implemented usability testing. Two modules in both edX and KOCW were selected for testing. Students with disabilities implemented usability testing and then each individual case was analyzed through quantitative and qualitative methods. As results, the degree of general usability in both edX and KOCW indicated an average level and the degree of accessibility in edX module was evaluated higher than KOCW. Specifically, the module of edX was rated highly by students with hearing impairments and the usability level of KOCW module was highly appreciated by blind students.

• Journal of rehabilitation welfare engineering & assistive technology
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.127-132
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• 2016

The purpose of the study is to identify the accessibility of OpenCouresWare(OCW) from the perspective of college students with visual and hearing impairments. Six students with visual impairments(3 blind and 3 low vision) and four students with hearing impairments(2 deaf, 2 hard of hearing) implemented usability testing. Two modules in KOCW were selected for testing. Students implemented usability testing and then each individual case was analyzed through quantitative and qualitative methods. As results, the degree of usability and accessibility in two modules indicated low level. Implications and recommendations for designing OCW module based on the results were suggested.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.261-270
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• 2018

Hearing-impaired people are increasing rapidly due to the global aging trend. Early detection of hearing loss requires an easy-to-use audiometry device for the public. Existing audiometry systems were developed as PC-based, PDA-based, or smartphone apps. These devices were often dependent on specific software platforms and hardware platforms. In this paper, we tried to improve software platform compatibility by using cross platform, and tried to implement IoT-based pure tone audiometry device which does not require sound pressure level correction due to hardware differences. Pure tone audiometry is available in a variety of ways depending on the type of hearing loss and age. Using the IoT-based audiometry device implemented in this paper, it will be possible for an app developer who lacks hardware knowledge to easily develop an app with various scenarios for hearing screening. The results of this study will contribute to overcoming the software and hardware dependency in the development of IoT-based healthcare device.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
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• v.31 no.5
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• pp.385-394
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• 2010

Automatic gain control(AGC) is used in hearing aids to compensate for the hearing level as to reduced dynamic range. AGC is consisted of the main 4 factors which are compression threshold, compression ratio, attack time, and release time. This study especially focus on each individual need for optimum release time parameters that can be changed within 7 certain range such as 12, 64, 128, 512, 2094, and 4096ms. To estimate the effect of various release time in AGC, twelve normal hearing and twelve hearing impaired listeners are participated. The stimuli are used by one syllable and sentence which have the same acoustic energy respectively. Then, each of score of the word recognition score is checked in quiet and noise conditions. As a result, it is verified that most people have the different best recognition score on specific release time. Also, if hearing aids is set by the optimum release time in each person, it is helpful in speech recognition and discrimination.

• The Journal of Korean Association of Computer Education
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.11-18
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• 2015

A person with defects and the lack of hearing, has very difficult problems to listen to the sound of conversation or environment, and these problems cause wrong directions in the linguistic sense and character. We designed and implemented an application to practice and correct pronunciation of a hearing-impaired person specially. This is made as a mobile app without the limitation of time and space, and this provides practices with the level of difficulty in learning of pronunciation, taking into consideration of remedial status in pronunciation. The hearing-impaired person can train the basic pronunciation and the word pronunciation. He or she can practice basic skills in pronunciation and check the record on the practice rate and the success rate. Also, the person can improve pronunciation by self-correction function using the front camera of a smart phone.

• Speech Sciences
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.181-187
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• 2003

This paper introduces a new zinc coated copper wire electrode with coiled cone shape which has low surface resistance and tolerance to the motion artifact for promontory stimulation electrically auditory brainstem responses (PSEABR). Auditory brainstem responses (ABR) can be used to predict hearing threshold level with a great deal of accuracy particularly for a young child who cannot cooperate mechanically and some hearing impaired who are exaggerating a hearing loss for economic compensation. While severe profound sensorineural hearing losses may not be implemented by auditory potentials, PSEABR is proven as a useful tool even for some sensorineural related hearing impaired. It was shown that PSEABR gives the electrical stimuli to promontory of the cochlear instead of giving acoustic stimuli. For this reason, PSEABR can be used as an alternative for cochlear implantation, and can also be used as an optimal device selection and neural information for MAP. It was found that the role of electrode is very important in PSEABR. Even though this cone-shaped electrode was applied in animal experiments, waveforms are well produced by PSEABR. Thus, it was concluded that cone-shaped electrode turned out to be a useful preoperative audiological evaluation tool in deciding time for cochlear implantation surgery.