Implementing Ecological Momentary Assessment in Audiological Research: Opportunities and Challenges.

Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) is a way to evaluate experiences in everyday life. It is a powerful research tool but can be complex and challenging for beginners. Application of EMA in audiological research brings with it opportunities and challenges that differ from other research disciplines.

How Individuals Shape Their Acoustic Environment: Implications for Hearing Aid Comparison in Ecological Momentary Assessment.

Objectives: When using ecological momentary assessment (EMA) to compare different hearing aid programs, it is usually assumed that for sufficiently long study durations similar situations will be experienced in both programs. However, conscious or subconscious adaptation of situations to one's hearing ability (e.g.

Measuring Hearing Aid Satisfaction in Everyday Listening Situations: Retrospective and In Situ Assessments Complement Each Other.

Background:  Recently, we developed a hearing-related lifestyle questionnaire (HEARLI-Q), which asks respondents to rate their hearing aid (HA) satisfaction in 23 everyday listening situations. It is unknown how HA satisfaction on the retrospective HEARLI-Q scale compares with HA satisfaction measured on the same scale implemented in Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA).

Purpose:  To learn how retrospective (HEARLI-Q) and in situ (EMA) assessments can complement each other.

Reasons for ceiling ratings in real-life evaluations of hearing aids: the relationship between SNR and hearing aid ratings.

Introduction: In past Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) studies, hearing aid outcome ratings have often been close to ceiling.

Methods: To analyze the underlying reasons for the very positive ratings, we conducted a study with 17 experienced hearing aid wearers who were fitted with study hearing aids. The acceptable noise level and the noise level where participants were unable to follow speech were measured.

Evaluation of Hearing Aids in Everyday Life Using Ecological Momentary Assessment: What Situations Are We Missing?

Background Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) is a method to evaluate hearing aids in everyday life that uses repeated smartphone-based questionnaires to assess a situation as it happens. Although being ecologically valid and avoiding memory bias, this method may be prone to selection biases due to questionnaires being skipped or the phone not being carried along in certain situations. Purpose This investigation analyzed which situations are underrepresented in questionnaire responses and physically measured objective EMA data (e.

Optimality of human contour integration.

For processing and segmenting visual scenes, the brain is required to combine a multitude of features and sensory channels. It is neither known if these complex tasks involve optimal integration of information, nor according to which objectives computations might be performed. Here, we investigate if optimal inference can explain contour integration in human subjects.

Inferring the role of inhibition in auditory processing of complex natural stimuli.

Intracellular studies have revealed the importance of cotuned excitatory and inhibitory inputs to neurons in auditory cortex, but typical spectrotemporal receptive field models of neuronal processing cannot account for this overlapping tuning. Here, we apply a new nonlinear modeling framework to extracellular data recorded from primary auditory cortex (A1) that enables us to explore how the interplay of excitation and inhibition contributes to the processing of complex natural sounds. The resulting description produces more accurate predictions of observed spike trains than the linear spectrotemporal model, and the properties of excitation and inhibition inferred by the model are furthermore consistent with previous intracellular observations.