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Threshold improvement and acoustic gain with hearing aids
Audiology : Official Organ of the International Society of Audiology
|September 1, 1976
Summary
Hearing aids provide similar threshold improvement to acoustic gain at comfort settings. However, at 40 dB gain, acoustic gain exceeded improvement, potentially limited by ambient noise for some hearing-impaired listeners.
Area of Science:
- Audiology
- Hearing Science
- Speech-Language Pathology
Background:
- Hearing aids are crucial for individuals with hearing impairment.
- Understanding the relationship between hearing aid settings and actual speech reception improvement is essential.
Purpose of the Study:
- To compare the acoustic gain of hearing aids with the actual threshold improvement in speech reception for hearing-impaired listeners.
- To investigate the impact of different hearing aid gain settings on audiological outcomes.
Main Methods:
- Aided speech reception thresholds were measured in 20 hearing-impaired listeners using three hearing aids.
- Hearing aids were set to comfort settings and a 40 dB acoustic gain setting.
- Threshold improvement was calculated by subtracting aided from unaided thresholds.
Main Results:
- At comfort settings, acoustic gain and threshold improvement were similar.
- At the 40 dB gain setting, acoustic gain averaged 5.6 dB more than threshold improvement.
- For high-gain settings, ambient noise appeared to limit threshold improvement in participants with better unaided hearing.
Conclusions:
- Hearing aid acoustic gain does not always directly translate to equivalent speech reception threshold improvement.
- The effectiveness of high-gain settings can be influenced by environmental noise, particularly for individuals with residual hearing.