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User preference and reliability of bilateral hearing aid gain adjustments
Benjamin W Y Hornsby1, H Gustav Mueller
1Department of Hearing and Speech Science, Dan Maddox Hearing Aid Research Laboratory, Vanderbilt Bill Wilkerson Center, Room 8310 Medical Center East, South Tower, 1215 21st Ave, South, Nashville, TN 37232-8242, USA. ben.hornsby@vanderbilt.edu
Journal of the American Academy of Audiology
|August 2, 2008
Summary
Users generally set hearing aid gain similarly to prescribed targets, but individual adjustments can be inconsistent. These minor deviations in hearing aid gain did not significantly impact speech understanding.
Area of Science:
- Audiology
- Hearing Science
- Speech Perception
Background:
- Hearing aid gain adjustment is crucial for optimizing audibility and speech intelligibility.
- Understanding user preferences versus prescriptive targets is essential for effective hearing aid fitting.
- Variability in user-adjusted gain may impact speech understanding outcomes.
Purpose of the Study:
- To assess the consistency and reliability of user-adjusted hearing aid gain.
- To compare user-set gain with NAL-NL1 prescriptive targets.
- To evaluate the effect of user gain adjustments on speech understanding in quiet and noise.
Main Methods:
- Sixteen individuals with bilateral hearing loss adjusted hearing aid gain for comfort and clarity.
- User gain settings were compared to NAL-NL1 targets.
- Speech understanding was tested using both user and target gain settings.
Main Results:
- On average, user and prescribed gain settings were comparable across both ears.
- Some users exhibited inconsistent "gain mismatches" between ears.
- No significant differences in speech understanding were observed between user and target gain settings.
Conclusions:
- While average user gain aligns with prescriptive targets, individual adjustments can be unreliable.
- Hearing aid gain mismatches did not significantly impair speech understanding in this study.
- Further research may explore the long-term effects of user-driven gain adjustments.
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