Intelligibility in noise using multimicrophone hearing aids

Difficulty understanding speech in background noise remains the most frequent complaint of people with hearing impairment. We examined the performance on a speech in noise test of two groups of listeners: one hearing impaired and the other normal hearing. The results showed a significant difference. In order to achieve a criterion performance of 50%, the hearing impaired group required an average 7.4 dB better S/N than the normal hearers. Our results also confirm that it is difficult to overcome the S/N disadvantage of a hearing loss by means of classic hearing aids with omnidirectional microphones. By comparison, the group tested with the multi-microphone directional hearing aids showed a significant average S/N improvement of 6.6 dB. In comparing the scores for the hearing impaired group using the multi-microphone directional instrument with the scores of the group of normal hearers there was no significant difference.