Benefit acclimatization in elderly hearing aid users

Area of Science:

• Audiology
• Speech and Hearing Sciences
• Gerontology

Background:

• Previous research suggested hearing aid benefit in noise may increase over time.
• This acclimatization was hypothesized to involve optimizing the use of high-frequency speech cues.
• This study investigated this phenomenon in elderly individuals with new hearing aid fittings.

Purpose of the Study:

• To explore the time course of hearing aid benefit in noisy environments for elderly individuals.
• To determine if acclimatization to hearing aids leads to improved speech intelligibility over 12 weeks.
• To investigate the role of high-frequency acoustic cues in this acclimatization process.

Main Methods:

• 22 elderly participants with mild to moderate sensorineural hearing loss were fitted unilaterally with hearing aids.
• Speech intelligibility was tested over a 12-week post-fitting period.
• A long-term follow-up assessed benefit after several months of hearing aid use.

Main Results:

• A significant group improvement in hearing aid benefit for speech in noise was observed, starting around 6 weeks.
• The magnitude of improvement was small for most participants; only three showed dramatic gains.
• No evidence supported a specific role for high-frequency cues in the observed benefit.
• Long-term follow-up showed increased benefit solely due to a decline in unaided listening performance.

Conclusions:

• Hearing aid acclimatization in noise occurs gradually over several weeks for some elderly users.
• The benefit increase is often small and may be influenced by declining unaided abilities over time.
• The hypothesized role of high-frequency cues was not supported by this investigation.