Items pertaining to hearing and hearing aids from the Hearing Aid Rehabilitation Questionnaire were applied to a heterogeneous sample of Dutch patients aged 55 years and more to evaluate their potential use in hearing screening. Subjects aged 55+ were recruited from a large general practitioners practice to participate. Three groups were formed: a group of 63 persons with a hearing aid, a group...

Hearing aids are used to improve sound audibility for people with hearing loss, but the ability to make use of the amplified signal, especially in the presence of competing noise, can vary across people. Here we review how neuroscientists, clinicians, and engineers are using various types of physiological information to improve the design and use of hearing aids.

BACKGROUND Children with auditory processing disorders (APD) are described to have a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) difficulty. Frequency-modulated (FM) systems have been reported to improve this situation. Yet the use of personal amplification that may be more portable has not been attempted. PURPOSE To determine whether personal amplification would result in improvement in speech-in-noise perf...

Patients with hearing loss limited to frequencies above 2 kHz are often considered borderline candidates for hearing aids. In this study, we used the Profile of Hearing Aid Benefit to access 134 patients' perceived benefit with a variety of linear hearing aids, some more capable than others at achieving prescribed frequency gain targets. We also sought to explore various audiologic and subject ...

Hearing impairment has been associated with decline in psychosocial function. Previous investigations have reported that the utilization of hearing aids can ameliorate these reductions in psychosocial function. To date, few investigations have examined the effects of frequency modulation technology on hearing handicap, adjustment to hearing loss, and communicative strategies. The purpose of thi...

Lexical tone perception was investigated in elderly Thais with Normal Hearing (NH), or Hearing Impairment (HI), the latter with and without Hearing Aids. Auditory-visual (AV), auditory-only (AO), and visual-only (VO) discrimination of Thai tones was investigated. Both groups performed poorly in VO. In AV and AO, the NH performed better than the HI group, and Hearing Aids facilitated tone discri...

Normal-hearing persons can make use of two ears in daily listening, and this binaural hearing offers a lot of advantages compared to monaural hearing. The mechanisms of binaural hearing are based on an analysis of interaural differences and monaural cues that are due to directional dependent filtering of the outer ears as described by HeadTransfer Functions. In order to support the binaural abi...

BACKGROUND hearing impairment has a negative impact on communication. This impact can be minimized by hearing aids fitting and auditory training. AIM to verify the effectiveness of auditory training in elderly individuals, new users of hearing aids, regarding the benefit in fitting. METHOD forty-two individuals with mild to moderate neurosensorial hearing loss, ranging in age from 60 to 90 ...

This article reports a study exploring what older people believe would enable them to adjust to and gain maximum benefit from wearing a hearing aid. A mixed methods approach was employed during 2006 involving interviews with key stakeholders, a survey across three Scottish health board areas and focus groups. Nine key stakeholders from six national and local organisations were interviewed about...

Acoustic feedback is a problem in hearing aids that contain a substantial amount of gain, hearing aids that are used in conjunction with vented or open molds, and in-the-ear hearing aids. Acoustic feedback is both annoying and reduces the maximum usable gain of hearing-aid devices. This paper studies analytically the steady-state convergence behavior of LMS-based adaptive algorithms when used i...