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Consistency of Hearing Aid Setting Preference in Simulated Real-World Environments: Implications for Trainable Hearing Aids

Trainable hearing aids let users fine-tune their hearing aid settings in their own listening environment: Based on consistent user-adjustments and information about the acoustic environment, the trainable aids will change environment-specific settings to the user’s preference. A requirement for effe...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Walravens, Els, Keidser, Gitte, Hickson, Louise
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: SAGE Publications 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7328351/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32602407
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2331216520933392
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author Walravens, Els
Keidser, Gitte
Hickson, Louise
author_facet Walravens, Els
Keidser, Gitte
Hickson, Louise
author_sort Walravens, Els
collection PubMed
description Trainable hearing aids let users fine-tune their hearing aid settings in their own listening environment: Based on consistent user-adjustments and information about the acoustic environment, the trainable aids will change environment-specific settings to the user’s preference. A requirement for effective fine-tuning is consistency of preference for similar settings in similar environments. The aim of this study was to evaluate consistency of preference for settings differing in intensity, gain-frequency slope, and directionality when listening in simulated real-world environments and to determine if participants with more consistent preferences could be identified based on profile measures. A total of 52 adults (63–88 years) with hearing varying from normal to a moderate sensorineural hearing loss selected their preferred setting from pairs differing in intensity (3 or 6 dB), gain-frequency slope (±1.3 or ± 2.7 dB/octave), or directionality (omnidirectional vs. cardioid) in four simulated real-world environments: traffic noise, a monologue in traffic noise at 5 dB signal-to-noise ratio, and a dialogue in café noise at 5 and at 0 dB signal-to-noise ratio. Forced-choice comparisons were made 10 times for each combination of pairs of settings and environment. Participants also completed nine psychoacoustic, cognitive, and personality measures. Consistency of preference, defined by a setting preferred at least 9 out of 10 times, varied across participants. More participants obtained consistent preferences for larger differences between settings and less difficult environments. The profile measures did not predict consistency of preference. Trainable aid users could benefit from counselling to ensure realistic expectations for particular adjustments and listening situations.
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spelling pubmed-73283512020-07-09 Consistency of Hearing Aid Setting Preference in Simulated Real-World Environments: Implications for Trainable Hearing Aids Walravens, Els Keidser, Gitte Hickson, Louise Trends Hear Original Article Trainable hearing aids let users fine-tune their hearing aid settings in their own listening environment: Based on consistent user-adjustments and information about the acoustic environment, the trainable aids will change environment-specific settings to the user’s preference. A requirement for effective fine-tuning is consistency of preference for similar settings in similar environments. The aim of this study was to evaluate consistency of preference for settings differing in intensity, gain-frequency slope, and directionality when listening in simulated real-world environments and to determine if participants with more consistent preferences could be identified based on profile measures. A total of 52 adults (63–88 years) with hearing varying from normal to a moderate sensorineural hearing loss selected their preferred setting from pairs differing in intensity (3 or 6 dB), gain-frequency slope (±1.3 or ± 2.7 dB/octave), or directionality (omnidirectional vs. cardioid) in four simulated real-world environments: traffic noise, a monologue in traffic noise at 5 dB signal-to-noise ratio, and a dialogue in café noise at 5 and at 0 dB signal-to-noise ratio. Forced-choice comparisons were made 10 times for each combination of pairs of settings and environment. Participants also completed nine psychoacoustic, cognitive, and personality measures. Consistency of preference, defined by a setting preferred at least 9 out of 10 times, varied across participants. More participants obtained consistent preferences for larger differences between settings and less difficult environments. The profile measures did not predict consistency of preference. Trainable aid users could benefit from counselling to ensure realistic expectations for particular adjustments and listening situations. SAGE Publications 2020-06-30 /pmc/articles/PMC7328351/ /pubmed/32602407 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2331216520933392 Text en © The Author(s) 2020 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ Creative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
spellingShingle Original Article
Walravens, Els
Keidser, Gitte
Hickson, Louise
Consistency of Hearing Aid Setting Preference in Simulated Real-World Environments: Implications for Trainable Hearing Aids
title Consistency of Hearing Aid Setting Preference in Simulated Real-World Environments: Implications for Trainable Hearing Aids
title_full Consistency of Hearing Aid Setting Preference in Simulated Real-World Environments: Implications for Trainable Hearing Aids
title_fullStr Consistency of Hearing Aid Setting Preference in Simulated Real-World Environments: Implications for Trainable Hearing Aids
title_full_unstemmed Consistency of Hearing Aid Setting Preference in Simulated Real-World Environments: Implications for Trainable Hearing Aids
title_short Consistency of Hearing Aid Setting Preference in Simulated Real-World Environments: Implications for Trainable Hearing Aids
title_sort consistency of hearing aid setting preference in simulated real-world environments: implications for trainable hearing aids
topic Original Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7328351/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32602407
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2331216520933392
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