Title: Designing Responsive Environments to Support Speech Perception For Individuals with Mild Cognitive Impairment

Clayton Feustel

Ph.D. Candidate

School of Interactive Computing

College of Computing

Georgia Institute of Technology

Date: April 18th, 2024

Time: 12:30 - 3:30pm

Location (physical): CODA Midtown Room

Location (remote): Virtual Link

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Committee:

Dr. Keith Edwards

      School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology

Dr. Elizabeth Mynatt

      School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology

      Khoury College of Computer Sciences, Northeastern University

Dr. Thomas Ploetz

      School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology

Dr. Craig Zimring

      College of Design, Georgia Institute of Technology

Dr. Erica Ryherd

      College of Engineering, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Abstract:

Older adults with mild cognitive (MCI) face significant challenges perceiving the speech of others. The factors that cause individuals with MCI to have greater difficulty perceiving speech are multi-faceted and include the loss of hearing due to aging as well as changes to cognitive systems that impact how speech is processed. These cognitive changes make certain environments more difficult to hear and understand others, particularly locations with significant levels of background noise. While modern wearable solutions (i.e., hearing aids) can improve communication experience, they fail to adequately perform in adverse acoustic environment.

By looking to the built environment, instead of the individual, we can extend the classical ubiquitous computing approach to improving speech perception into a new domain by designing a responsive environment that changes the acoustic properties of space according to the physical properties of the room and the activities of the occupants. Using the body of knowledge, methods, and research approaches from architectural acoustics and ubiquitous computing I strengthen the emerging research on the unique difficulties that older adults with MCI have in complex acoustic environments with competing speech and prototype a novel responsive environment that changes the acoustic properties of space to support speech perception.

Through interviews with members of the program, surveys with program staff, and audiological evaluations I show that while individuals with MCI may be able to achieve similar levels of speech perception thresholds as their cognitively healthy peers, they must dedicate significantly more cognitive resources to reach similar performance in environments with competing speech where high levels of informational masking exist. Using the knowledge from this work, I design and deploy a novel sensor that can continuously and accurately take live measurements of the relevant acoustic properties. I continue my mixed methods approach by conducting an in-situ evaluation of a responsive acoustic environment in a real-world therapeutic facility with individuals with MCI to validate the effectiveness of dynamically changing the level of sound masking based on the presence of competing speech. The results highlight the opportunity for environmentally-targeted approaches to improve speech perception for older adults with MCI, as well as the drawbacks that future work in this space will need to address when designing for individuals when utilizing unique differentiated reactions to informational masking.