Assessment of Novel Sound Changing Principles in Hearing Instruments to Determine Their Application

Participants will take part in both a passive and active emotion recognition task: (1) passively listening to semantically-neutral sentences with emotional prosody, and (2) actively listening and subsequently categorizing emotional sentences and sounds. Participants are seated and instructed to stare at a fixation cross while the stimulus is played. During this study, non-invasive physiological measurements of pupil dilation will be recorded from the participants. Using this paradigm we will be assessing the effect of frequency lowering on emotion recognition. The study takes the form of a partly three factorial design (passive task x frequency lowering x acclimatization). Participants also perform a two factor design (active task x frequency lowering). Each participant performs two passive tests (20 minutes long each) with frequency lowering on and off, and a four week acclimatization period in-between. Participants perform one active listening task after the acclimatization period with frequency lowering on and off.