Benefit From Directional Microphone Hearing Aids : Objective and Subjective Evaluations

OBJECTIVES: The aims of this study were to find and compare the effect of directional (DIR) processing of two different hearing aids via both subjective and objective methods, to determine the association between the results of the subjective and objective evaluations, and to find out individual predictive factors influencing the DIR benefit.

METHODS: Twenty-six hearing aid users fitted unilaterally with each two different experimental hearing aid performed modified Korean Hearing in Noise Test (K-HINT) in three DIR conditions; omnidirectional (OMNI) mode, OMNI plus noise reduction feature, fixed DIR mode. In order to determine benefits from DIR benefit within a hearing aid and compare performance of the DIR processing between hearing aids, a subjective questionnaire was administrated on speech quality (SQ) and discomfort in noise (DN) domain. Correlation analysis of factors influencing DIR benefit was accomplished.

RESULTS: Benefits from switching OMNI mode to DIR mode within both hearing aids in K-HINT were about 2.8 (standard deviation, 3.5) and 2.1 dB SNR (signal to ratio; SD, 2.5), but significant difference in K-HINT results between OMNI and OMNI plus noise reduction algorithm was not shown. The subjective evaluation resulted in the better SQ and DN scores in DIR mode than those in OMNI mode. However, the difference of scores on both SQ and DN between the two hearing aids with DIR mode was not statistically significant. Any individual factors did not significantly affect subjective and objective DIR benefits.

CONCLUSION: DIR benefit was found not only in the objective measurement performed in the laboratory but also in the subjective questionnaires, but the subjective results was failed to have significant correlation with the DIR benefit obtained in the K-HINT. Factors influencing individual variation in perceptual DIR benefit were still hard to explain.

Medienart:

E-Artikel

Erscheinungsjahr:

2015

Erschienen:

2015

Enthalten in:

Zur Gesamtaufnahme - volume:8

Enthalten in:

Clinical and experimental otorhinolaryngology - 8(2015), 3 vom: 05. Sept., Seite 237-42

Sprache:

Englisch

Beteiligte Personen:

Park, Hee-Sung [VerfasserIn]
Moon, Il Joon [VerfasserIn]
Jin, Sun Hwa [VerfasserIn]
Choi, Ji Eun [VerfasserIn]
Cho, Yang-Sun [VerfasserIn]
Hong, Sung Hwa [VerfasserIn]

Links:

Volltext

Themen:

Hearing Aids
Hearing Loss
Journal Article
Signal-To-Noise Ratio
Speech Intelligibility

Anmerkungen:

Date Completed 02.09.2015

Date Revised 30.09.2020

published: Print-Electronic

Citation Status PubMed-not-MEDLINE

doi:

10.3342/ceo.2015.8.3.237

funding:

Förderinstitution / Projekttitel:

PPN (Katalog-ID):

NLM252375912