Perceptual consequence of vents in hearing aids.

The perceptual consequence of venting an earmould while maintaining the insertion gain at a preferred listening level was examined on nine hearing-impaired individuals with bilaterally symmetrical sloping sensorineural hearing loss. Subjects wore binaural programmable hearing aids and selected their preferred insertion gain while the hearing aids were coupled to vented (2.2 mm parallel vent) and unvented earmoulds. A modified Simplex procedure with discourse passages presented in quiet was used to determine preferred insertion gain. The results showed that venting enhanced subjects' quality rating of the hearing aids during listening and vocalization tasks, but did not change subjects' word recognition scores. These results suggest that vented earmoulds should be used to achieve target insertion gain in order to maximize patients' acceptance of hearing aids.