Effectiveness of a Self-Fitting Tool for User-Driven Fitting of Hearing Aids.

Hearing aids can be effective devices to compensate for age- or non-age-related hearing losses. Their overall adoption in the affected population is still low, especially in underdeveloped countries in the subpopulation experiencing milder hearing loss. One of the major reasons for low adoption is the need for repeated complex fitting by professional audiologists, which is often not completed for various reasons.

Ecological Momentary Assessment: A Field Evaluation of Subjective Ratings of Speech in Noise.

Purpose: As hearing rehabilitation research evolves to include both retrospective and momentary assessment outcome measures, it is important to understand how in-the-moment contextual factors influence subjective ratings. We aimed to determine, over a 4-week period of participants responding to ecological momentary assessments (EMAs) in their own environments, whether: (1) participants will complete surveys in speech-in-noise listening situations; (2) ratings of speech in noise change in a predictable manner as the acoustic conditions change; and (3) EMAs provide patient insights beyond those provided from retrospective ratings.

Design: Fourteen adults aged 26 to 86 years with at least 6 months of hearing aid experience were recruited for an 8-week crossover field trial (4 weeks wearing hearing aids with no EMA; 4 weeks wearing hearing aids with EMA).

A Phoneme Perception Test Method for High-Frequency Hearing Aid Fitting.

Background: Outcomes with hearing aids (HAs) can be assessed using various speech tests, but many tests are not sensitive to changes in high-frequency audibility.

Purpose: A Phoneme Perception Test (PPT), designed for the phonemes /s/ and /ʃ/, has been developed to investigate whether detection and recognition tasks are able to measure individual differences in phoneme audibility and recognition for various hearing instrument settings. These capabilities were studied using two different fricative stimulus materials.

Evaluation of wideband frequency responses and non-linear frequency compression for children with mild to moderate high-frequency hearing loss.

Objective: To evaluate wideband amplification and non-linear frequency compression (NLFC) as a means to improve speech recognition for children with mild/moderate hearing loss.

Design: Randomized within-subject design with repeated measures across test conditions.

Study Sample: Eleven children with mild to moderate hearing loss were evaluated with: (1) Phonak BTE without NLFC, (2) Phonak BTE with NLFC, and (3) Oticon BTE with wideband response extending to 8000 Hz.

A survey of the attitudes of practitioners toward teleaudiology.

Unlabelled: Abstract Objective: To survey hearing healthcare practitioners' (1) attitudes toward teleaudiology appointments, (2) willingness to conduct different clinical tasks via teleaudiology, and (3) willingness to conduct a teleaudiology appointment with different patient populations.

Design: All participants were asked to complete the Attitudes toward Teleaudiology Scale for Practitioners (ATS-P), a 46-item online survey designed for this study.

Study Sample: The responses from 202 hearing healthcare practitioners working in Canada were collected.

Long-term effects of non-linear frequency compression for children with moderate hearing loss.

Objective: To evaluate non-linear frequency compression (NLFC) as a means to improve speech recognition for children with moderate to moderately-severe hearing loss following a six-month acclimatization period.

Design: Within subject design with repeated measures across test conditions.

Study Sample: Fifteen children, ages 5 to 13 years, with moderate to moderately-severe high-frequency sensorineural hearing loss were fitted with Phonak Nios, micro-sized, BTE hearing aids and evaluated after two six-week intervals with and without NLFC and again after a six-month period of consecutive NLFC use.

Evaluation of nonlinear frequency compression for school-age children with moderate to moderately severe hearing loss.

Background: Previous research has indicated that children with moderate hearing loss experience difficulty with recognition of high-frequency speech sounds, such as fricatives and affricates. Conventional behind-the-ear (BTE) amplification typically does not provide ample output in the high frequencies (4000 Hz and beyond) to ensure optimal audibility for these sounds.

Purpose: To evaluate nonlinear frequency compression (NLFC) as a means to improve speech recognition for children with moderate to moderately severe hearing loss.