Coherence Estimation Tracks Auditory Attention in Listeners with Hearing Impairment
Coherence estimation between speech envelope and electroencephalography (EEG) is a proven method in neural speech tracking. This paper proposes an improved coherence estimation algorithm which utilises phase sensitive multitaper cross-spectral estimation. Estimated EEG coherence differences be-tween attended and ignored speech envelopes for a hearing impaired (HI) population are evaluated and compared. Testing was made on 31 HI subjects and showed significant coherence differences for grand averages over the delta, theta, and alpha EEG bands. Significance of increased coherence for attended speech was stronger for the new method compared to the traditional method. The new method of estimating EEG coherence, improves statistical detection performance and enables more rigorous data-based hypothesis-testing results.