Perceived benefits of amplification as a function of central auditory status in the elderly

A measure of perceived hearing aid benefit was obtained from 24 older hearing-impaired adults who had received their hearing aids a minimum of 6 months prior to this study. Subjects were also administered a battery of tests, including comparisons of maximum scores for phonetically balanced words and the Synthetic Sentence Identification Test to identify central auditory disorder. There appears to be no relationship between perceived hearing aid benefit and central auditory function as measured in this study. Several explanations for these somewhat surprising findings are offered, as well as clinical implications regarding the use of hearing aids by older adults.