Nonlinear Frequency Compression Hearing Aids: Do Children Need an Acclimatization Time?

Hearing aid users often require a period of time to adjust to new hearing aid signal processing. For example, the auditory system of a novice hearing aid user must accommodate new, amplified sounds; this is often accompanied by improved performance. The same can be said for experienced hearing aid users receiving a new, improved hearing aid fitting (e.g., new audibility of speech cues). This adjustment period is often termed auditory acclimatization. The definition of this term, as provided in an article summarizing the Eriksholm Workshop on Auditory Deprivation and Acclimatization (Arlinger et al. 1996), is as follows: ...a systematic change in auditory performance with time, linked to a change in the acoustic information available to the listener. It involves an improvement in performance that cannot be attributed purely to task, procedural or training effects (p. 87). There are many dimensions of hearing aid performance to consider when evaluating a new fitting. For the purpose of the case study presented here, the dimension of interest is speech perception.