Development and Evaluation of a Loudness Validation Method With Natural Signals for Hearing Aid Fitting.

Loudness is a fundamental dimension of auditory perception. When hearing impairment results in a loudness deficit, hearing aids are typically prescribed to compensate for this. However, the relationship between an individual's specific hearing impairment and the hearing aid fitting strategy used to address it is usually not straightforward.

Vehicle noise: comparison of loudness ratings in the field and the laboratory.

Objective: Distorted loudness perception is one of the main complaints of hearing aid users. Measuring loudness perception in the clinic as experienced in everyday listening situations is important for loudness-based hearing aid fitting. Little research has been done comparing loudness perception in the field and in the laboratory.

Spatial speech-in-noise performance in simulated single-sided deaf and bimodal cochlear implant users in comparison with real patients.

Objective: Speech reception thresholds (SRTs) in spatial scenarios were measured in simulated cochlear implant (CI) listeners with either contralateral normal hearing, or aided hearing impairment (bimodal), and compared to SRTs of real patients, who were measured using the exact same paradigm, to assess goodness of simulation.

Design: CI listening was simulated using a vocoder incorporating actual CI signal processing and physiologic details of electric stimulation on one side. Unprocessed signals or simulation of aided moderate or profound hearing impairment was used contralaterally.

Uni- and bilateral spectral loudness summation and binaural loudness summation with loudness matching and categorical loudness scaling.

Objective: Current hearing aid prescription rules assume that spectral loudness summation decreases with hearing impairment and that binaural loudness summation is independent of hearing loss and signal bandwidth. Previous studies have shown that these assumptions might be incorrect. Spectral loudness summation was measured and compared for loudness scaling and loudness matching.

Potential Consequences of Spectral and Binaural Loudness Summation for Bilateral Hearing Aid Fitting.

Aversiveness of loud sounds is a frequent complaint by hearing aid users, especially when fitted bilaterally. This study investigates whether loudness summation can be held responsible for this finding. Two aspects of loudness summation should be taken into account: spectral loudness summation for broadband signals and binaural loudness summation for signals that are presented binaurally.

Physiologically motivated individual loudness model for normal hearing and hearing impaired listeners.

A loudness model with a central gain is suggested to improve individualized predictions of loudness scaling data from normal hearing and hearing impaired listeners. The current approach is based on the loudness model of Pieper [(2016). J.

Restoring Perceived Loudness for Listeners With Hearing Loss.

Objectives: Normalizing perceived loudness is an important rationale for gain adjustments in hearing aids. It has been demonstrated that gains required for restoring normal loudness perception for monaural narrowband signals can lead to higher-than-normal loudness in listeners with hearing loss, particularly for binaural broadband presentation. The present study presents a binaural bandwidth-adaptive dynamic compressor (BBDC) that can apply different gains for narrow- and broadband signals.

Loudness summation of equal loud narrowband signals in normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners.

Objective: Loudness perception of binaural broadband signals, e.g. speech shaped noise, shows large individual differences using frequency-dependent amplification which was adjusted to restore the loudness perception of monaural narrowband signals in hearing-impaired (HI) listeners.

Spectral and binaural loudness summation for hearing-impaired listeners.

Sensorineural hearing loss typically results in a steepened loudness function and a reduced dynamic range from elevated thresholds to uncomfortably loud levels for narrowband and broadband signals. Restoring narrowband loudness perception for hearing-impaired (HI) listeners can lead to overly loud perception of broadband signals and it is unclear how binaural presentation affects loudness perception in this case. Here, loudness perception quantified by categorical loudness scaling for nine normal-hearing (NH) and ten HI listeners was compared for signals with different bandwidth and different spectral shape in monaural and in binaural conditions.

Optimized loudness-function estimation for categorical loudness scaling data.

Individual loudness perception can be assessed using categorical loudness scaling (CLS). The procedure does not require any training and is frequently used in clinics. The goal of this study was to investigate different methods of loudness-function estimation from CLS data in terms of their test-retest behaviour and to suggest an improved method compared to Brand and Hohmann (2002) for adaptive CLS.