Several hearing aid prescription procedures specify frequency gain functions in terms of the desired levels of amplified speech. The most direct method for verifying hearing aid fittings based on these procedures requires a measurement of amplified speech in the ear canal. This paper describes the evaluation of a probe microphone measurement procedure designed to measure amplified speech to ver...

A 48-item questionnaire was administered to 100 older adults to determine their expectations regarding hearing aid use. The sample consisted of volunteers from a variety of senior citizen organizations and ranged in age from 55 to 92 years. Only individuals who reported no prior hearing aid usage were included in the sample. Expectations for the following factors were considered: cosmetics, aco...

OBJECTIVES In many countries including the United Kingdom, hearing aids are a first line of audiologic intervention for many people with tinnitus and aidable hearing loss. Nevertheless, there is a lack of high quality evidence to support that they are of benefit for tinnitus, and wide variability in their use in clinical practice especially for people with mild hearing loss. The aim of this stu...

This article summarizes data from a 3-year, double-blinded study of directional hearing aid benefit. Ninety-four subjects in three hearing loss groups, all previous users of omnidirectional output-compression hearing aids, completed all aspects of the study. Participants were fit with new hearing aids for 1 month in a directional mode and 1 month in an omnidirectional mode. Following 1 month of...

A novel approach to hearing-aid signal processing is described, which attempts to re-establish a normal neural representation in the sensorineural impaired auditory system. Most hearing-aid 5tting procedures are based on heuristics or some initial qualitative theory. These theories, such as loudness normalization, loudness equalization or maximal intelligibility can give vastly di(erent results...

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...

BACKGROUND Evidence suggests that hearing-aid users have difficulties with own-voice level control, most likely because their auditory feedback is affected by hearing-aid amplification. PURPOSE The purpose of this study was to investigate how changes to auditory feedback affect the voice level of hearing-aid users. RESEARCH DESIGN A correlational study was set up to investigate the relation...

Objectives—The current study was designed to see how hearing-impaired individuals judge level differences between speech sounds with and without hearing amplification. It was hypothesized that hearing-aid compression should adversely affect the user’s ability to judge level differences. Design—Thirty-eight hearing-impaired participants performed an adaptive tracking procedure to determine their...

According to the Better Hearing Institute (BHI) Behind-theEar (BTE) hearing aids often demonstrate greater problems with moisture than in-the-ear (ITE) hearing aids [2]. BHI noted moisture is difficult to observe and not always easy to diagnose as the cause of hearing aid failure. As public awareness of hearing loss increases, research evaluating moisture and corrosion should additionally be mo...

The auditory brainstem response (ABR) recorded while wearing a hearing aid may supply supplemental information about the benefit and appropriateness of the hearing aid for certain infants. The purposes of this study were (1) to determine the effects of different output limiting circuits on the acoustics of tone-pip stimuli used for ABR recordings and (2) assess how changes in hearing-aid-proces...