This brief report describes the changes in hearing-aid performance and benefit in 9 elderly hearing-aid wearers over a 3-year period following the hearing-aid fitting. Objective measures of hearing-aid performance included three measures of speech recognition: (a) the Nonsense Syllable Test (NST) presented at 65 dB SPL and a +8 dB signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), (b) the Connected Speech Test (CST)...

A directional acoustic receiving system is constructed in the form of a necklace including an array of two or more microphones mounted on a housing supported on the chest of a user by a conducting loop encircling the users neck. Signal processing electronics contained in the same housing receive and combine the microphone signals in such a manner as to provide an amplified output signal which e...

Modern probe microphone systems offer a wide range of measurement options including a multiplicity of test signals. The signal of choice for any particular measurement is largely determined by the purpose in performing the measurement. For example, while a pure tone sweep would be fine for measuring a real-ear-to-coupler difference, the patient's own vocalizations would probably serve better fo...

Each "Communication Corner" essay is self-contained; however, they build on each other. For best results, before reading this and doing the exercise, go to first "How an Ugly Duckling Became a Swan," then read succeeding essay. We live in visual age, which has led many public speakers believe every formal speech give requires aids. This too simplistic. Visual aids are supposed aid speech, not d...

OBJECTIVE The aim of the present study was to evaluate a particular sound-quality rating procedure, referred to here as the Judgments of Sound Quality (JSQ) test, for potential use as an outcome measure with elderly hearing aid wearers. The validity and reliability of the JSQ as an outcome measure were determined for unaided and aided listening conditions. DESIGN A repeated-measures design wa...

OBJECTIVES In the present study, we investigated whether speech-related cognitive function and speech recognition ability under background noise in adults with hearing impairment are improved with the use of hearing aids. METHODS Participants were recruited from the ENT Department of Eulji Hospital from September 2008 to July 2009. The study group comprised 18 participants (mean age, 69.5±8.3...

This paper evaluates speech enhancement in binaural multimicrophone hearing aids by noise reduction algorithms based on the multichannel Wiener filter (MWF) and the MWF with partial noise estimate (MWF-N). Both algorithms are specifically developed to combine noise reduction with the preservation of binaural cues. Objective and perceptual evaluations were performed with different speech-in-mult...

Good speech perception and communication skills in everyday life are crucial for participation and well-being, and are therefore an overarching aim of auditory rehabilitation. Both behavioral and self-report measures can be used to assess these skills. However, correlations between behavioral and self-report speech perception measures are often low. One possible explanation is that there is a m...

OBJECTIVE Up to now, treatment modalities of unilateral deafness consist of no treatment, conventional contralateral routing of signal (CROS), or Bone-Anchored Hearing Aid (BAHA) hearing aid. Cochlear implantation makes a new treatment modality available for patients with single-sided deafness. The aim of this study is to evaluate the use of unilateral electrical stimulation with normal hearing...

This brief report discusses the affect of digital noise reduction (DNR) processing on aided speech recognition and sound quality measures in 14 adults fitted with a commercial hearing aid. Measures of speech recognition and sound quality were obtained in two different speech-in-noise conditions (71 dBA speech, +6 dB SNR and 75 dBA speech, +1 dB SNR). The results revealed that the presence or ab...