Implications of High-Frequency Cochlear Dead Regions for Fitting Hearing Aids to Adults With Mild to Moderately Severe Hearing Loss

Abstract

Short Summary It has been suggested that existence of high-frequency cochlear dead regions (DRs) has implications for hearing aid fitting, and that the optimal amount of high-frequency gain is reduced for these patients. This investigation used laboratory and field measurements to examine the effectiveness of reduced high-frequency gain in typical hearing aid users with high-frequency DRs. Both types of data revealed that speech understanding was better with the evidence-based prescription than with reduced high-frequency gain, and that this was seen for listeners with and without DRs. Nevertheless, subjects did not always prefer the amplification condition that produced better speech understanding.

The Effect of Low-Pass Filtering on Identification of Nonsense Syllables in Quiet by School-Age Children With and Without Cochlear Dead Regions

“…The results for group MS show a similar pattern to those previously reported for adults with moderate to severe hearing loss Mackersie et al 2004;Cox et al 2011;2012). It appears that, for both adults and children, amplification of frequencies up to 4 kHz is beneficial for ears without DRs and ears with restricted DRs in the range 1 to 3 kHz.…”

Spatial Separation Benefit for Unaided and Aided Listening

“…In the current study, self-report of task workload suggested a reduction in perceived effort for older adults with hearing loss listening to aided lower frequency speech with spatial separation. Thus, even when providing audible high-frequency speech information does not result in significant improvements in speech recognition, some individuals with hearing loss may prefer additional high-frequency gain in laboratory and real-world listening (Cox et al 2012). Although previous results suggest that providing gain above 4.0 kHz does not help and may hinder speech recognition in noise for individuals with high-frequency hearing loss (e.g., Hogan & Turner 1998; Ching et al 1998), the optimal degree of high-frequency amplification remains unclear.…”

Study of the long-term effects of frequency compression by behavioral verbal tests in adults

“…In view of this, some researchers recommend the prescription of little or none amplification in high frequencies during adaptation of hearing aids for patients with steeply sloping hearing loss (3,4) . Conversely, it is known that information input at high frequencies can significantly improve speech perception, especially in noisy environments (5)(6)(7) . Other studies suggest that extending the frequency band can improve speech sounds detection (8)(9)(10) and fricative sounds perception (11) .…”