Hearing-aid use in the elderly population is problematic since not all people who would benefit from hearing aids actually obtain one. In this study, the relationship between pre-fitting expectations and willingness to use hearing aids is addressed. One hundred adult hearing aid candidates (mean age 68.6 years) were randomly recruited from eight different private ENT practices. The subjects completed a questionnaire comprising a number of different aspects of expectation and some additional variables potentially influencing willingness to use hearing aids. Based on the outcome of the questionnaire a linear regression model predicting motivation to use hearing aids was calculated and evaluated. Among the 11 parameters evaluated three contributed significantly to the model of willingness. The three predictor variables were expectations towards improvement of quality of life, stigmatization, and self-rated hearing ability. They accounted for about 55% of the variability in the data for willingness. Examination of a sub-sample three months after the survey had taken place revealed a distinct relationship between willingness and the decision to obtain or decline hearing aids. In conclusion, the results strongly encourage supporting positive expectations in order to motivate individuals with hearing impairment to use hearing systems.

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of altering the fundamental frequency (F0) on perception of prosody and speaker gender in both normal-hearing listeners and cochlear implant (CI) recipients. Tests with natural speech and defined modifications of the F0 were performed, and the resulting changes in perception were measured. Compared to the normal-hearing listeners, most of the CI users exhibited worse outcomes, especially for sentence stress. In contrast, the speaker gender tests yielded similar results for both groups when artificially modifying the F0 contour. The results seemed to be strongly related to the duration of alterations in F0. Although the perception of prosodic cues was limited in most of the CI recipients, they showed qualitatively similar results to normal-hearing listeners in that the boundary between questions and statements and between female and male voices was comparable. A large inter-individual difference in performance was observed among the CI recipients, which could not be attributed to different processor or implant types or to other factors such as implant experience.

PurposeTo examine the association of cognitive function, age, and hearing loss with clinically assessed hearing aid benefit in older hearing-impaired persons.MethodsHearing aid benefit was assessed using objective measures regarding speech recognition in quiet and noisy environments as well as a subjective measure reflecting everyday situations captured using a standardized questionnaire. A broad range of general cognitive functions such as attention, memory, and intelligence were determined using different neuropsychological tests. Linear regression analyses were conducted with the outcome of the neuropsychological tests as well as age and hearing loss as independent variables and the benefit measures as dependent variables. Thirty experienced older hearing aid users with typical age-related hearing impairment participated.ResultsMost of the benefit measures revealed that the participants obtained significant improvement with their hearing aids. Regression models showed a significant relationship between a fluid intelligence measure and objective hearing aid benefit. When individual hearing thresholds were considered as an additional independent variable, hearing loss was the only significant contributor to the benefit models. Lower cognitive capacity – as determined by the fluid intelligence measure – was significantly associated with greater hearing loss. Subjective benefit could not be predicted by any of the variables considered.ConclusionThe present study does not give evidence that hearing aid benefit is critically associated with cognitive function in experienced hearing aid users. However, it was found that lower fluid intelligence scores were related to higher hearing thresholds. Since greater hearing loss was associated with a greater objective benefit, these results strongly support the advice of using hearing aids regardless of age and cognitive function to counter hearing loss and the adverse effects of age-related hearing impairment. Still, individual cognitive capacity might be relevant for hearing aid benefit during an initial phase of hearing aid provision if acclimatization has not yet taken place.

The influence of compression ratio and attack time could be shown for ILDs, but the effect was rather small, at least for the low compression ratios commonly used in hearing aids. The influence further decreased when attack time was prolonged. The dramatic impairment of the discrimination of ITDs with the hearing-impaired subjects in the high-frequency range suggests that they primarily rely on ILD cues.