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Paired comparison judgments for hearing aid selection in children
1House Ear Institute, Los Angeles, California.
Ear and Hearing
|December 1, 1991
Summary
A paired comparison technique is feasible for selecting hearing aids for children aged 6.5 and older with mild to moderately severe hearing loss. This method reliably assesses auditory clarity and hearing aid performance in pediatric hearing aid selection.
Area of Science:
- Audiology
- Pediatric audiology
- Hearing aid technology
Background:
- Hearing aid selection for children requires reliable methods to assess auditory clarity.
- Paired comparison techniques offer a potential approach for subjective hearing aid evaluation.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the feasibility of a paired comparison technique for selecting hearing aids in children.
- To determine the minimum age at which children can reliably perform paired comparison tasks for auditory clarity.
Main Methods:
- Three experiments were conducted involving normal-hearing and hearing-impaired children.
- Paired comparison tasks assessed auditory clarity judgments and hearing aid preferences.
- Correlations between paired comparison results and phoneme identification scores were analyzed.
Main Results:
- Children aged 6.0-6.4 years (normal-hearing) and 6.5-7.4 years (hearing-impaired) met task criteria.
- Paired comparison judgments showed moderate to strong reliability for most hearing-impaired children.
- Hearing aids selected via paired comparison did not significantly alter speech intelligibility.
Conclusions:
- A paired comparison technique is feasible for hearing-impaired children aged 6.5 years and older.
- The method can be reliably used for selecting hearing aids in pediatric audiology.
- This technique aids in optimizing hearing aid fitting for children with mild to moderately severe sensorineural hearing loss.