Performance characteristics for hearing aid microphone versus telephone and telephone/telecoil reception modes

Two hearing aids and three telephone receivers were used to compare electroacoustic and word intelligibility data for hearing aid microphone reception versus telephone/telephone and telephone/telecoil reception. Measurements included test reference position gain and frequency response characteristics (Experiment 1) and word intelligibility scores (Experiment 2). The results indicated that performance was similar for hearing aid microphone reception and telephone/telephone reception. Telephone/telecoil performance varied, depending on which telephone receiver was involved, but was poorer than hearing aid microphone performance. Recommendations were made concerning the selection of hearing aids and the management of hearing aid users relative to telephone/telecoil communication.