Wu Mengfan, Cañete Oscar M, Schmidt Jesper Hvass, Fereczkowski Michal, Neher Tobias
Institute of Clinical Research, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark.
Research Unit for ORL-Head & Neck Surgery and Audiology, Odense University Hospital, Odense, Denmark.
Trends Hear. 2021 Jan-Dec;25:23312165211023709. doi: 10.1177/23312165211023709.
Hearing aid (HA) users differ greatly in their speech-in-noise (SIN) outcomes. This could be because the degree to which current HA fittings can address individual listening needs differs across users and listening situations. In two earlier studies, an auditory test battery and a data-driven method were developed for classifying HA candidates into four distinct auditory profiles differing in audiometric hearing loss and suprathreshold hearing abilities. This study explored aided SIN outcome for three of these profiles in different noise scenarios. Thirty-one older habitual HA users and six young normal-hearing listeners participated. Two SIN tasks were administered: a speech recognition task and a "just follow conversation" task requiring the participants to self-adjust the target-speech level. Three noise conditions were tested: stationary speech-shaped noise, speech-shaped babble noise, and speech-shaped babble noise with competing dialogues. Each HA user was fitted with three HAs from different manufacturers using their recommended procedures. Real-ear measurements were performed to document the final gain settings. The results showed that HA users with mild hearing deficits performed better than HA users with pronounced hearing deficits on the speech recognition task but not the just follow conversation task. Moreover, participants with pronounced hearing deficits obtained different SIN outcomes with the tested HAs, which appeared to be related to differences in HA gain. Overall, these findings imply that current proprietary fitting strategies are limited in their ability to ensure good SIN outcomes, especially for users with pronounced hearing deficits, for whom the choice of device seems most consequential.
助听器（HA）使用者在噪声环境下的言语表现差异很大。这可能是因为当前的助听器验配在满足个体听力需求的程度上，因使用者和聆听环境的不同而存在差异。在两项早期研究中，开发了一套听觉测试组合和一种数据驱动方法，用于将助听器候选者分为四种不同的听觉类型，这些类型在听力计听力损失和阈上听力能力方面存在差异。本研究探讨了其中三种类型在不同噪声场景下的助听言语噪声（SIN）结果。31名老年习惯性HA使用者和6名年轻听力正常的聆听者参与了研究。进行了两项SIN任务：一项言语识别任务和一项“仅跟随对话”任务，要求参与者自行调整目标言语水平。测试了三种噪声条件：稳态言语形状噪声、言语形状的嘈杂噪声以及带有竞争对话的言语形状的嘈杂噪声。每位HA使用者按照不同制造商推荐的程序佩戴了三台HA。进行了真耳测量以记录最终的增益设置。结果表明，在言语识别任务中，轻度听力缺陷的HA使用者比听力缺陷明显的HA使用者表现更好，但在“仅跟随对话”任务中并非如此。此外，听力缺陷明显的参与者使用测试的HA获得了不同的SIN结果，这似乎与HA增益的差异有关。总体而言，这些发现意味着当前的专有验配策略在确保良好的SIN结果方面能力有限，尤其是对于听力缺陷明显的使用者，对他们来说设备的选择似乎最为关键。
