The Acceptable Noise Level (ANL) test is a measure of the amount of background noise that a person is willing to tolerate. In recent years it has gained interest among researchers and hearing care professionals because of its ability to predict, with 85% accuracy, who will be successful with hearing aids. This statistic is not only useful for counselling purposes, but it implies that if one cou...

stated that we are in the age of outcome measures; these measures are essential in the assessment of hearing aid efficacy. While numerous efforts have been made to predict hearing aid outcome, an accurate method of predicting how people will utilize their hearing aids does not exist. Furthermore, it is not known why some individuals are better hearing aid users than others. The research we have...

I appreciated the October special issue on acceptable noise level (ANL), edited by Anna Nabelek. It is a fascinating test, and I agree that the test may help us identify those at greatest need for noise-reduction technology (Nabelek et al, 2006), and perhaps it will help us in setting hearing aid algorithm levels. Adding to their conjecture, I wonder if those with good (low) ANLs would be intol...

OBJECTIVES The goal of the present study was to examine whether Acceptable Noise Levels (ANLs) would be lower (greater acceptance of noise) in binaural listening than in monaural listening condition and also whether meaningfulness of background speech noise would affect ANLs for directional microphone hearing aid users. In addition, any relationships between the individual binaural benefits on ...

Acceptable noise level (ANL) measures a listener's reaction to background noise while listening to speech. Relations among hearing aid use and ANL, speech in noise (SPIN) scores, and listener characteristics (age, gender, pure-tone average) were investigated in 191 listeners with hearing impairment. Listeners were assigned to one of three groups based on patterns of hearing aid use: full-time u...

Studies of acceptable noise level (ANL) consistently report large intersubject variability in acceptance of background noise while listening to speech. This variability is not related to age, gender, hearing sensitivity, type of background noise, speech perception in noise performance, or efferent activity of the medial olivocochlear pathway. An exploratory study was conducted to determine if d...