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Advantages of Binaural Amplification to Acceptable Noise Level of Directional Hearing Aid Users

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 microph...

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Autores principales: Kim, Ja-Hee, Lee, Jae Hee, Lee, Ho-Ki
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Korean Society of Otorhinolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4050094/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24917904
http://dx.doi.org/10.3342/ceo.2014.7.2.94
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author Kim, Ja-Hee
Lee, Jae Hee
Lee, Ho-Ki
author_facet Kim, Ja-Hee
Lee, Jae Hee
Lee, Ho-Ki
author_sort Kim, Ja-Hee
collection PubMed
description 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 ANLs and the individuals' demographic information were investigated. METHODS: Fourteen hearing aid users (mean age, 64 years) participated for experimental testing. For the ANL calculation, listeners' most comfortable listening levels and background noise level were measured. Using Korean ANL material, ANLs of all participants were evaluated under monaural and binaural amplification with a counterbalanced order. The ANLs were also compared across five types of competing speech noises, consisting of 1- through 8-talker background speech maskers. Seven young normal-hearing listeners (mean age, 27 years) participated for the same measurements as a pilot testing. RESULTS: The results demonstrated that directional hearing aid users accepted more noise (lower ANLs) with binaural amplification than with monaural amplification, regardless of the type of competing speech. When the background speech noise became more meaningful, hearing-impaired listeners accepted less amount of noise (higher ANLs), revealing that ANL is dependent on the intelligibility of the competing speech. The individuals' binaural advantages in ANLs were significantly greater for the listeners with longer experience of hearing aids, yet not related to their age or hearing thresholds. CONCLUSION: Binaural directional microphone processing allowed hearing aid users to accept a greater amount of background noise, which may in turn improve listeners' hearing aid success. Informational masking substantially influenced background noise acceptance. Given a significant association between ANLs and duration of hearing aid usage, ANL measurement can be useful for clinical counseling of binaural hearing aid candidates or unsuccessful users.
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spelling pubmed-40500942014-06-10 Advantages of Binaural Amplification to Acceptable Noise Level of Directional Hearing Aid Users Kim, Ja-Hee Lee, Jae Hee Lee, Ho-Ki Clin Exp Otorhinolaryngol Original Article 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 ANLs and the individuals' demographic information were investigated. METHODS: Fourteen hearing aid users (mean age, 64 years) participated for experimental testing. For the ANL calculation, listeners' most comfortable listening levels and background noise level were measured. Using Korean ANL material, ANLs of all participants were evaluated under monaural and binaural amplification with a counterbalanced order. The ANLs were also compared across five types of competing speech noises, consisting of 1- through 8-talker background speech maskers. Seven young normal-hearing listeners (mean age, 27 years) participated for the same measurements as a pilot testing. RESULTS: The results demonstrated that directional hearing aid users accepted more noise (lower ANLs) with binaural amplification than with monaural amplification, regardless of the type of competing speech. When the background speech noise became more meaningful, hearing-impaired listeners accepted less amount of noise (higher ANLs), revealing that ANL is dependent on the intelligibility of the competing speech. The individuals' binaural advantages in ANLs were significantly greater for the listeners with longer experience of hearing aids, yet not related to their age or hearing thresholds. CONCLUSION: Binaural directional microphone processing allowed hearing aid users to accept a greater amount of background noise, which may in turn improve listeners' hearing aid success. Informational masking substantially influenced background noise acceptance. Given a significant association between ANLs and duration of hearing aid usage, ANL measurement can be useful for clinical counseling of binaural hearing aid candidates or unsuccessful users. Korean Society of Otorhinolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery 2014-06 2014-05-21 /pmc/articles/PMC4050094/ /pubmed/24917904 http://dx.doi.org/10.3342/ceo.2014.7.2.94 Text en Copyright © 2014 by Korean Society of Otorhinolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Original Article
Kim, Ja-Hee
Lee, Jae Hee
Lee, Ho-Ki
Advantages of Binaural Amplification to Acceptable Noise Level of Directional Hearing Aid Users
title Advantages of Binaural Amplification to Acceptable Noise Level of Directional Hearing Aid Users
title_full Advantages of Binaural Amplification to Acceptable Noise Level of Directional Hearing Aid Users
title_fullStr Advantages of Binaural Amplification to Acceptable Noise Level of Directional Hearing Aid Users
title_full_unstemmed Advantages of Binaural Amplification to Acceptable Noise Level of Directional Hearing Aid Users
title_short Advantages of Binaural Amplification to Acceptable Noise Level of Directional Hearing Aid Users
title_sort advantages of binaural amplification to acceptable noise level of directional hearing aid users
topic Original Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4050094/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24917904
http://dx.doi.org/10.3342/ceo.2014.7.2.94
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