Abstract
Clinicians have long been aware of the range of performance variability with hearing aids. Despite improvements in technology, there remain many instances of well-selected and appropriately fitted hearing aids whereby the user reports minimal improvement in speech understanding. This review presents a multistage framework for understanding how a hearing aid affects performance. Six stages are considered: (1) acoustic content of the signal, (2) modification of the signal by the hearing aid, (3) interaction between sound at the output of the hearing aid and the listener's ear, (4) integrity of the auditory system, (5) coding of available acoustic cues by the listener's auditory system, and (6) correct identification of the speech sound. Within this framework, this review describes methodology and research on 2 new assessment techniques: acoustic analysis of speech measured at the output of the hearing aid and auditory evoked potentials recorded while the listener wears hearing aids. Acoustic analysis topics include the relationship between conventional probe microphone tests and probe microphone measurements using speech, appropriate procedures for such tests, and assessment of signal-processing effects on speech acoustics and recognition. Auditory evoked potential topics include an overview of physiologic measures of speech processing and the effect of hearing loss and hearing aids on cortical auditory evoked potential measurements in response to speech. Finally, the clinical utility of these procedures is discussed.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 119-143 |
| Number of pages | 25 |
| Journal | Trends in Amplification |
| Volume | 10 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Sep 2006 |
Funding
This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health grants R01DC006014 (PS) and R01DC007705 (KT) and by the University of Washington Royalty Research Fund. Portions of this work were presented at the following professional meetings: American Academy of Audiology, 2004; American Auditory Society, Scottsdale, Arizona, 2004, 2005; Association for Research in Otolaryngology, Baltimore, Maryland, 2006. The authors thank Curtis Billings, Marc Caldwell, Evelyn Davies-Venn, Lendra Friesen, Lorienne Jenstad, Laura Kalstein, and Kerry Witherell for their help in collecting and analyzing the data discussed here.
Keywords
- evoked potentials
- hearing aids
- probe microphone
- speech hearing loss
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Speech and Hearing