Assessing Situational Awareness of Hearing-Impaired People Through their Perception of Non-Speech Sound Events: a Literature Review

Granier E, Serizel R, Ducourneau J, Maillou B, Faiz A. Assessing Situational Awareness of Hearing-Impaired People Through their Perception of Non-Speech Sound Events: a Literature Review. In: Express Paper. Audio Engineering Society; 2026. Paper 446. Available from: https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=23265

@inproceedings{Granier2026_23265,
  author = {Granier, Emma and Serizel, Romain and Ducourneau, Joël and Maillou, Balbine and Faiz, Adil},
  title = {{Assessing Situational Awareness of Hearing-Impaired People Through their Perception of Non-Speech Sound Events: a Literature Review}},
  note = {Paper 446},
  year = {2026},
  month = may,
  publisher = {Audio Engineering Society},
  url = {https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=23265}
}

TY  - CPAPER
TI  - Assessing Situational Awareness of Hearing-Impaired People Through their Perception of Non-Speech Sound Events: a Literature Review
AU  - Granier, Emma
AU  - Serizel, Romain
AU  - Ducourneau, Joël
AU  - Maillou, Balbine
AU  - Faiz, Adil
M1  - Paper 446
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/05/28
UR  - https://aes.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=23265
PB  - Audio Engineering Society
LA  - en
AB  - Situational awareness is a multisensory ability that enables individuals to perceive and appropriately take into account their immediate environment. This perception of the world through our senses is carried out continuously and unconsciously throughout the day. When auditory perception is degraded, an individual may no longer correctly perceive a doorbell, a water leak, or an alarm signal, which negatively affects quality of life and may lead to dangerous situations. Auditory perception can in particular be degraded by hearing loss, a common and widespread condition. The most common treatment consists of wearing hearing aids, which are mainly designed to improve speech intelligibility, especially in noisy environments. Feedback from hearing-impaired people and hearing-aid users indicates that, although auditory situational awareness has been recognised as an essential component of well-being, it remains insufficiently studied and requires further investigation. There is currently no standard method for assessing to which extent ones situational awareness is affected by hearing impairment and the use of hearing aids. This is a complex process that requires assessing the perception of relevant sound events within a continuous stream of multisensorial information, by individuals who have different subjective preferences. Most existing methods are limited to evaluating only a subset of the problem, such as identification and localisation of non-speech sound events. The rise of new technologies, such as virtual reality, enables the development of assessment methods within more realistic yet controlled environments. This study aims to review existing methods in order to highlight their limitations in addressing the issue at hand.
ER  -