title: The effects of various front-to-back ratios on the performance of directional microphone hearing aids.
abstract: Twenty-four sensorineural hearing-impaired adults were evaluated using four directional microphone hearing aids differing only in front-to-back ratios. The speech material utilized was the Synthetic Sentence Identification Message Competition Ratios of 0, -10, and -20 dB. The primary signal was presented from a 0 degree azimuth with the competing message was presented from a direct overhead location. The results revealed a systematic improvement in speech understanding as the size of the front-to-back ratio increased. This relationship was not significantly affected by the difficulty of the listening situation.
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D006310:Hearing Aids / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000592:standards*; D006319:Hearing Loss, Sensorineural / Q000523:psychology / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D013065:Speech Intelligibility