Interactions between Cognition and Hearing Aid Compression Release Time: Effects of Linguistic Context of Speech Test Materials on Speech-in-Noise Performance

Recent research has established a connection between hearing aid (HA) users’ cognition and speech recognition performance with short and long compression release times (RT). Contradictive findings prevent researchers from using cognition to predict RT prescription. We hypothesized that the linguistic context of speech recognition test materials was one of the factors that accounted for the inconsistency. The present study was designed to examine the relationship between HA users’ cognition and their aided speech recognition performance with short and long RTs using materials with various linguistic contexts. Thirty-four older HA users’ cognitive abilities were quantified using a reading span test. They were fitted with behind-the-ear style HAs with adjustable RT settings. Three speech recognition tests were used: the word-in-noise (WIN) test, the American four alternative auditory feature (AFAAF) test, and the Bamford-Kowal-Bench speech-in-noise (BKB-SIN) test. The results showed that HA users with high cognitive abilities performed better on the AFAAF and the BKB-SIN than those with low cognitive abilities when using short RT. None of the speech recognition tests produced significantly different performance between the two RTs for either cognitive group. These findings did not support our hypothesis. The results suggest that cognition might not be important in prescribing RT.