Speech Intelligibility Benefits of Hearing Aids at Various Input Levels

Kuk, Francis; Lau, Chi-Chuen; Korhonen, Petri; Crose, Bryan

doi:10.3766/jaaa.26.3.7

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…This could potentially decrease the amount of loud noise and improve speech intelligibility in a social setting. Furthermore, if listeners are novice hearing aid wearers, it may be important to remind them that normal hearing individuals also experience difficulty understanding speech in loud noise, and that environmental noise may become more acceptable with continued hearing aid usage (Dillon, 2001;Philibert et al, 2005;Dawes et al, 2014;Kuk et al, 2015). The current study did not find a relationship between TNL and overall hearing aid satisfaction.…”

Section: Predicting Hearing Aid Satisfactionmentioning

confidence: 51%

Tracking of Noise Tolerance to Predict Hearing Aid Satisfaction in Loud Noisy Environments

Seper¹,

Kuk²,

Korhonen³

et al. 2019

J Am Acad Audiol

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A method that tracked tolerable noise level (TNL) over time while maintaining subjective speech intelligibility was reported previously. Although this method was reliable and efficacious as a research tool, its clinical efficacy and predictive ability of real-life hearing aid satisfaction were not measured.The study evaluated an adaptive method to estimate TNL using slope and variance of tracked noise level as criteria in a clinical setting. The relationship between TNL and subjective hearing aid satisfaction in noisy environments was also investigated.A single-blinded, repeated-measures design.Seventeen experienced hearing aid wearers with bilateral mild-to-moderately-severe sensorineural hearing loss.Participants listened to 82-dB SPL continuous speech and tracked the background noise level that they could “put up with” while subjectively understanding >90% of the speech material. Two trials with each babble noise and continuous speech-shaped noise were measured in a single session. All four trials were completed aided using the participants’ own hearing aids. The stimuli were presented in the sound field with speech from 0° and noise from the 180° azimuth. The instantaneous tolerable noise level was measured using a custom program and scored in two ways; the averaged TNL (aTNL) over the 2-min trial and the estimated TNL (eTNL) as soon as the listeners reached a stable noise estimate. Correlation between TNL and proportion of satisfied noisy environments was examined using the MarkeTrak questionnaire.All listeners completed the tracking of noise tolerance procedure within 2 min with good reliability. Sixty-five percent of the listeners yielded a stable noise estimate after 59.9 sec of actual test time. The eTNL for all trials was 78.6 dB SPL (standard deviation [SD] = 4.4 dB). The aTNL for all trials was 78.0 dB SPL (SD = 3.3 dB) after 120 sec. The aTNL was 79.2 dB SPL (SD = 5.4 dB) for babble noise and 77.0 dB SPL (SD = 5.9 dB) for speech-shaped noise. High within-session test–retest reliability was evident. The 95% confidence interval was 1.5 dB for babble noise and 2.8 dB for continuous speech-shaped noise. No significant correlation was measured between overall hearing aid satisfaction and the aTNL (ρ = 0.20 for both noises); however, a significant relationship between aTNL and proportion of satisfied noisy situations was evident (ρ = 0.48 for babble noise and ρ = 0.55 for speech-shaped noise).The eTNL scoring method yielded similar results as the aTNL method although requiring only half the time for 65% of the listeners. This time efficiency, along with its reliability and the potential relationship between TNL and hearing aid satisfaction in noisy listening situations suggests that this procedure may be a good clinical tool to evaluate whether specific features on a hearing aid would improve noise tolerance and predict wearer satisfaction with the selected hearing aid in real-life loud noisy situations. A larger sample of hearing aid wearers is needed to further validate these potential uses.

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Section: Predicting Hearing Aid Satisfactionmentioning

confidence: 51%

Tracking of Noise Tolerance to Predict Hearing Aid Satisfaction in Loud Noisy Environments

Seper¹,

Kuk²,

Korhonen³

et al. 2019

J Am Acad Audiol

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The other devices showed some variability in their classification approach, but the results of this analysis primarily show that both subjects and devices generally agree. One explanation for this is at these high levels, there is often a perceptual roll off (Dirks et al., 1977; Hannley & Jerger, 1981; Jerger & Jerger, 1971) in which the perceptual benefit of digital hearing aids also decreases as input levels increase (Kuk et al., 2015). A large number of the acoustic scenes were presented at relatively high overall levels, which may have limited any chance to differentiate devices in the SNR-change conditions.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Comparison of Environment Classification Among Premium Hearing Instruments

et al. 2021

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Hearing aids classify acoustic environments into multiple, generic classes for the purposes of guiding signal processing. Information about environmental classification is made available to the clinician for fitting, counseling, and troubleshooting purposes. The goal of this study was to better inform scientists and clinicians about the nature of that information by comparing the classification schemes among five premium hearing instruments in a wide range of acoustic scenes including those that vary in signal-to-noise ratio and overall level (dB SPL). Twenty-eight acoustic scenes representing various prototypical environments were presented to five premium devices mounted on an acoustic manikin. Classification measures were recorded from the brand-specific fitting software then recategorized to generic labels to conceal the device company, including (a) Speech in Quiet, (b) Speech in Noise, (c) Noise, and (d) Music. Twelve normal-hearing listeners also classified each scene. The results revealed a variety of similarities and differences among the five devices and the human subjects. Where some devices were highly dependent on input overall level, others were influenced markedly by signal-to-noise ratio. Differences between human and hearing aid classification were evident for several speech and music scenes. Environmental classification is the heart of the signal processing strategy for any given device, providing key input to subsequent decision-making. Comprehensive assessment of environmental classification is essential when considering the cost of signal processing errors, the potential impact for typical wearers, and the information that is available for use by clinicians. The magnitude of differences among devices is remarkable and to be noted.

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Continued search for better prediction of aided speech understanding in multi-talker environments

Xia

Kalluri

Micheyl

et al. 2017

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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To better understand issues of hearing-aid benefit during natural listening, this study examined the added demand placed by the goal of understanding speech over the more typically studied goal of simply recognizing speech sounds. The study compared hearing-aid benefit in two conditions, and examined factors that might account for the observed benefits. In the phonetic condition, listeners needed only identify the correct sound to make a correct response. In the semantic condition, listeners had to understand what they had heard to respond correctly, because the answer did not include any keywords from the spoken speech. Hearing aids provided significant benefit for listeners in the phonetic condition. In the semantic condition on the other hand, there were large inter-individual differences, with many listeners not experiencing any benefit of aiding. Neither a set of cognitive and linguistic tests, nor age, could explain this variability. Furthermore, analysis of psychometric functions showed that enhancement of the target speech fidelity through improvement of signal-to-noise ratio had a larger impact on listeners' performance in the phonetic condition than in the semantic condition. These results demonstrate the importance of incorporating naturalistic elements in the simulation of multi-talker listening for assessing the benefits of intervention in communication success.

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Speech Intelligibility Benefits of Hearing Aids at Various Input Levels

Abstract: The results supported the hypothesis that the study hearing aid can provide aided speech-in-noise benefit at very high noise inputs in a controlled environment.

Cited by 4 publications

References 28 publications

Tracking of Noise Tolerance to Predict Hearing Aid Satisfaction in Loud Noisy Environments

Tracking of Noise Tolerance to Predict Hearing Aid Satisfaction in Loud Noisy Environments

A Comparison of Environment Classification Among Premium Hearing Instruments

Continued search for better prediction of aided speech understanding in multi-talker environments

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