The goal of this clinical trial is to learn if hearing aid settings that are customized to individual listening strategies result in better speech understanding than non-customized hearing aid settings. The main question it aims to answer is: Do customized hearing aid settings result in better speech understanding? Researchers will compare hearing aid settings that match individual listening strategy to a general setting. Participants will: Wear hearing aids for a 2-hour visit to our laboratory. Listen to some sentences in noise and repeat the sentences they hear, with two different hearing aid settings Listen to some sentences in noise and rate how understandable they think those sentences are, with two different hearing aid settings
Participants will complete standard clinical hearing evaluations and a listening profile test to evaluate their individual listening strategy. Hearing aids will then be programmed either based on their clinical hearing evaluations alone using typical hearing aid settings or based on their hearing test with settings further adjusted to account for their individual listening strategies.
Study Type
INTERVENTIONAL
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
TREATMENT
Masking
SINGLE
Enrollment
30
Behind-the-ear hearing aids that have been programmed based on the participant's individual listening strategy and hearing loss.
Behind-the-ear hearing aids that have been programmed based on their hearing loss and typical clinical settings.
Northwestern University
Evanston, Illinois, United States
Speech recognition
Participants listen to and repeat sentences, they are scored based on the % correct of keywords they accurately repeat.
Time frame: Outcome measure is collected during the intervention, a two hour visit to the lab where they are wearing the hearing aids
Speech Spatial Quality
Rate perceived intelligibility and quality on a scale of 0 to 10 with 10 generally being better
Time frame: Outcome measure is collected during the intervention, a two hour visit to the lab where they are wearing the hearing aids
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