The influence of hearing aid nonlinear distortion on two auditory tasks.
A study is reported which examines the influence of hearing aid nonlinear distortion on multitone pitch perception. Normal-hearing subjects produced results indicating that hearing aid-generated harmonic and intermodulation components did significantly affect pitch judgments. Substantial differences in the amount of distortion between the two test aids was not, however, a critical factor. A follow-up study using closed-set intelligibility materials in noise further confirmed that relatively large measurable differences in nonlinear distortion between hearing aids do not seem to have the clinical significance which is often presumed.
D000328:Adult; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006310:Hearing Aids; D006801:Humans; D010897:Pitch Discrimination; D011571:Psychoacoustics