Hearing aid experience and background noise affect the robust relationship between working memory and speech recognition in noise.

The aim of this study was to examine how background noise and hearing aid experience affect the robust relationship between working memory and speech recognition. Matrix sentences were used to measure speech recognition in noise. Three measures of working memory were administered. Study sample: 148 participants with at least 2 years of hearing aid experience. A stronger overall correlation between working memory and speech recognition performance was found in a four-talker babble than in a stationary noise background. This correlation was significantly weaker in participants with most hearing aid experience than those with least experience when background noise was stationary. In the four-talker babble, however, no significant difference was found between the strength of correlations between users with different experience. In general, more explicit processing of working memory is invoked when listening in a multi-talker babble. The matching processes (cf. Ease of Language Understanding model, ELU) were more efficient for experienced than for less experienced users when perceiving speech. This study extends the existing ELU model that mismatch may also lead to the establishment of new phonological representations in the long-term memory.