Danielle Glista1, Marianne Hawkins1, Andrea Bohnert2, Julia Rehmann3, Jace Wolfe4, Susan Scollie1. 1. Child Amplification Laboratory, National Centre for Audiology, University of Western Ontario, London, Canada. 2. Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Division of Communication Disorders, University Medicine of the Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany. 3. Phonak AG, Staefa, Switzerland. 4. Hearts for Hearing, Oklahoma City.
Abstract
PURPOSE: This study implemented a fitting method, developed for use with frequency lowering hearing aids, across multiple testing sites, participants, and hearing aid conditions to evaluate speech perception with a novel type of frequency lowering. METHOD: A total of 8 participants, including children and young adults, participated in real-world hearing aid trials. A blinded crossover design, including posttrial withdrawal testing, was used to assess aided phoneme perception. The hearing aid conditions included adaptive nonlinear frequency compression (NFC), static NFC, and conventional processing. RESULTS: Enabling either adaptive NFC or static NFC improved group-level detection and recognition results for some high-frequency phonemes, when compared with conventional processing. Mean results for the distinction component of the Phoneme Perception Test (Schmitt, Winkler, Boretzki, & Holube, 2016) were similar to those obtained with conventional processing. CONCLUSIONS: Findings suggest that both types of NFC tested in this study provided a similar amount of speech perception benefit, when compared with group-level performance with conventional hearing aid technology. Individual-level results are presented with discussion around patterns of results that differ from the group average.
PURPOSE: This study implemented a fitting method, developed for use with frequency lowering hearing aids, across multiple testing sites, participants, and hearing aid conditions to evaluate speech perception with a novel type of frequency lowering. METHOD: A total of 8 participants, including children and young adults, participated in real-world hearing aid trials. A blinded crossover design, including posttrial withdrawal testing, was used to assess aided phoneme perception. The hearing aid conditions included adaptive nonlinear frequency compression (NFC), static NFC, and conventional processing. RESULTS: Enabling either adaptive NFC or static NFC improved group-level detection and recognition results for some high-frequency phonemes, when compared with conventional processing. Mean results for the distinction component of the Phoneme Perception Test (Schmitt, Winkler, Boretzki, & Holube, 2016) were similar to those obtained with conventional processing. CONCLUSIONS: Findings suggest that both types of NFC tested in this study provided a similar amount of speech perception benefit, when compared with group-level performance with conventional hearing aid technology. Individual-level results are presented with discussion around patterns of results that differ from the group average.