Manufacturer predicted and measured REAR values in adult hearing aid fitting: accuracy and clinical usefulness.

Audiologists may fit hearing aids using real-ear aided response (REAR) values predicted by manufacturer's fitting software, rather than actual measured REARs. This study examined how well one manufacturer's software was able to predict REARs for a DSP behind-the-ear product in 41 adults (N = 79 ears) under four conditions (two hearing loss configurations and two inputs). Results showed that for all ears tested, measured REAR values were significantly different from predicted for most of the audiometric frequencies for all four test conditions.

Older adult performance on an altered version of the SSI test.

The Synthetic Sentence Identification (SSI) test has been used extensively in investigations of reduced speech understanding skills in older adults. In this study the SSI test was altered by adding noise to the competing message and by administering practice lists and equivalent test lists, as well as versions of the test that have 4- and 12-s interstimulus intervals (ISIs), along with the standard 8-s ISI. The purpose was to determine the effect of these alterations on performance in a group of older adults with average pure-tone average 2 values less than 33 dB HL.