This present study examined the relationship between cognitive measures and self-report hearing aid outcome. A sentence-final word identification and recall (SWIR) test was used to investigate how hearing aid use may relate to experienced explicit cognitive processing. A visually based cognitive test battery was also administered. To measure self-report hearing aid outcome, the International Ou...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate patients' opinions of the bone-anchored hearing aid (BAHA) compared with a conventional hearing aid. DESIGN Prospective study with two questionnaires. Questionnaire A consisted of questions that compared patients' previous hearing aid with the BAHA. Questionnaire B consisted of questions about the patients' experiences with the hearing aids. PATIENTS Sixty-five consecu...

The purpose of this research study is to determine if differences in hearing and communication self-efficacy exist between adult hearing aid users and non-hearing aid users with acquired sensorineural hearing loss. No statistical differences were found between groups.

Objective : The ear irritations suffered by hearing aid (HA) users are yet to be related to the clinical state of canal. We undertook this study to examine the nature of debris and the microbial flora of ears of hearing aid users, as well as evaluate the determinant factors of ear irritation in this population. Methods : An observational clinical study was carried out involving 32 unilateral he...

In this proposal we describe our intent to build a directional hearing aid under the guidance of Professor Erik Cheever and E. Carr Everbach. Currently, there is a need for reliable and effective hearing aid designs and we will attempt to implement one given our undergraduate background in engineering. This project will demonstrate our interdisciplinary education at Swarthmore College through t...

Hearing rehabilitation tends to focus on the influence of intraindividual factors and concepts such as readiness for change and health beliefs. In contrast, less is known about the role of social context and the potential role of significant others on hearing aid adoption. This explorative retrospective study investigated whether hearing aid adoption is associated with significant other attenda...

Surveys have revealed that nonusers of hearing aids frequently hold negative perceptions of hearing aid users (the "hearing aid effect"). This study involved the use of both objective and subjective approaches in measuring the perceptions of older females toward hearing aid wearers. Twenty older females rated an aided and unaided peer after reading to them. Between-group differences were insign...

The responses of hearing aid users aged 65 to 80 years to a 64-item measure of perceived benefit afforded by hearing aids were collected in order to develop normative data concerning the perceived benefit afforded specifically to elderly patients. Across most of the listening situations evaluated, the elderly respondents reported less perceived benefit than the generally younger listeners from ...

This paper is part of a large nation-wide study on the benefits of bilateral hearing aid fittings in the Netherlands. The study is designed to assess the added value of fitting a second hearing aid, to develop tools to evaluate this objectively, and to predict a positive effect from diagnostic tests. Due to the aging population in Western Europe, an increase in the number of hearing aid users i...

The overall objective of work under this contract has been to evaluate promising signal processing algorithms for hearing aids under realistic conditions. Recent work has aimed at: 1) evaluating the behavioral and acoustic performance of several feedback-cancellation algorithms; 2) assessing the improvements to speech reception in the presence of interfering noise provided by processing signals...