A new study published in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America highlights an important challenge faced by hearing aid users: difficulty separating voices in noisy, multi-talker environments—commonly referred to as the “cocktail party problem.”

The research, led by Elin Roverud and Virginia Best at the University of Sydney, explored whether hearing aids—while essential for amplifying sound—can inadvertently disrupt spatial hearing, the brain’s ability to locate and distinguish sound sources in space.

Study design

Normally hearing participants were fitted with hearing aids and asked to complete two tasks:

1. Sound localization: Participants heard individual words from different loudspeakers and indicated where they believed the sound originated.
2. Cocktail party task: Participants listened to five simultaneous talkers and had to identify words spoken by a target voice defined by its spatial location.

Performance with and without hearing aids was compared to evaluate how the devices influenced spatial perception and speech recognition.

Key findings

Wearing hearing aids led to increased localization errors—participants were less accurate in judging where sounds came from—and reduced speech-recognition accuracy in multi-talker settings. Most of the speech-recognition difficulties were due to mistakenly attending to the wrong talker rather than failing to hear the target speech itself.

Interestingly, while localization and speech recognition were not strongly correlated within either condition alone, changes in azimuth localization accuracy (the ability to perceive left-right direction) were associated with changes in speech recognition between the aided and unaided conditions. This suggests that even small disruptions in spatial perception can cascade into larger communication challenges in noisy, realistic listening environments.

Why this matters

These findings underscore the complex relationship between amplification and spatial hearing. Hearing aids can improve audibility but may simultaneously alter natural spatial cues that the brain uses to focus on a single speaker among many.

At Hashir International Institute and The Hearing Well Practice, clinicians address this challenge by combining precise hearing aid verification with listening strategy training and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) to reduce listening effort and frustration. Rehabilitation focuses not only on hearing sensitivity but also on restoring spatial awareness and attentional flexibility in complex environments.

As hearing technology advances, understanding how to preserve spatial cues will be crucial for improving real-world listening outcomes—helping individuals with hearing loss engage more confidently in social and work settings.

Full citation

Roverud, E., & Best, V. (2025). Consequences of disrupted spatial perception with hearing aids for “cocktail party” listening. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 158(4), 3348–3358. https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0039668