The goal of this project is to find out if the way a hearing aid processes a sound signal should be determined in part by an individual's cognitive characteristics. We anticipate that the outcome of this work will be a battery of assessments that will guide hearing aid processing for older patients with hearing loss.
Response to hearing aids is highly variable, with some individuals reporting much more benefit than others. Preliminary work by our laboratory and others suggests that patient factors-including cognition-may contribute to differences in how individuals respond to altered speech cues, such as those alterations introduced by hearing aid processing. The long-term goal of this work is to improve hearing aid outcomes by optimizing hearing aid processing for each individual.
Study Type
INTERVENTIONAL
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
HEALTH_SERVICES_RESEARCH
Masking
DOUBLE
Enrollment
49
University of Colorado at Boulder
Boulder, Colorado, United States
Speech Intelligibility Score
Participants listen to sentences in a background of noise and repeat the sentence heard. The outcome is percentage of correctly repeated words.
Time frame: 6 weeks
Effectiveness of Aural Rehabilitation (EAR)
The listener rates the extent to which hearing has improved with the hearing aid (0=least improved, 100=most improved).
Time frame: 6 weeks
Speech and Spatial Qualities of Hearing (SSQ) Questionnaire
Listener rates her/his perceived ability. Each question describes a different situation, such as listening to one talker in quiet. Test is scored from 0 to 10, with 10 = best score.
Time frame: 6 weeks
Adherence
Average number of hours per day the hearing aid was worn.
Time frame: 6 weeks
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