The normal-hearing system extracts monaural and binaural features from the signals at the left and right ears in order to separate and classify sound sources. Robustness of source extraction is achieved by exploiting redundancies in the source signals (auditory scene analysis, ASA). ASA is closely related to the “Cocktail Party Effect”, i.e., the ability of normal-hearing listeners to perceive ...

The purpose of this research is to mine a large set of heterogeneous audiology data to create a decision support system (DSS) to choose between two hearing aid types (ITE and BTE aid). This research is based on the data analysis of audiology data using various statistical and data mining techniques. It uses the data of a large NHS (National Health Services, UK) facility. It uses 180,000 records...

This paper evaluates the relationship between auditory contexts, hearing aid features, and hearing outcomes based on real-world measurements. We use a mobile phone application to concurrently evaluate the auditory contexts and hearing aid outcomes using Ecological Momentary Assessments. The collected dataset includes 3437 surveys collected from nineteen patients over ten months. Our analysis in...

Spatial release from masking (SRM) was tested within the first week of fitting and after 12 weeks hearing aid use for unilateral and bilateral adult hearing aid users. A control group of experienced hearing aid users completed testing over a similar time frame. The main research aims were (1) to examine auditory acclimatization effects on SRM performance for unilateral and bilateral hearing aid...

A new scale, the Hearing Aid Needs Assessment (HANA), was developed in order to examine the relationship between perceived communication needs/expectations with the actual benefit eventually achieved with newly fitted hearing aids. A serial sample of 82 patients completed the HANA prior to hearing aid consultation. A subgroup of 42 patients eventually completed the Hearing Aid Performance Inven...

Modern digital hearing aids require and offer a great level of personalization. Today, this personalization is not performed based directly on what the user actually perceives, but on a hearing-care professional’s interpretation of what the user explains about what is perceived. In this paper, an interactive personalization system based on Gaussian process regression and active learning is prop...

PURPOSE To evaluate hearing aid handling skills for new and experienced users and to assess if such skills influence user's benefit and satisfaction. METHODS Seventy four participants (mean age of 70.43), experienced (n=37) or new hearing aid users (n=37) performed the tasks of "Practical Hearing Aid Skills Test" (PHAST), which were scored on a five-point Likert scale - higher scores indicate...

Hearing aid satisfaction is a pleasurable emotional experience as an outcome of evaluation of performance. Many tools have been designed to measure the degree of satisfaction overall, or along the dimensions of cost, appearance, acoustic benefit, comfort, and service. Various studies have used these tools to examine the relationships between satisfaction and other factors. Findings are not alwa...

Thirty-three hearing-impaired individuals were each fitted with three hearing aids. The instruments conformed to three frequency-gain prescriptions, differing by a total of 8 dB/octave, with the middle prescription derived using the MSU version 3.0 procedure. The subjects were divided into three matched groups of eleven. Each group used the fitted hearing aids in one of three everyday listening...