title: The effects of "noise suppression" hearing aids on consonant recognition in speech-babble and low-frequency noise.
abstract: We evaluated the performance of experienced hearing-aid users wearing seven different commercially available "noise-suppression" hearing aids. Two hearing aids, the Audiotone A-54 and the Telex 363C, used amplitude compression. The others, two versions of a Maico hearing aid SP147, a Richards ASE-B, a Rion HB-69AS, and a Siemens 283ASP, are designed to attenuate specific frequency regions in the presence of noise. Sixteen subjects listened to 13 consonants in the form (i)-consonant-(i) with six replications per consonant (78 items). Performance was measured with the compression or noise-suppression circuit on and off in the presence of speech-babble noise and in continuous low-frequency noise. Measurements were also obtained with the suppression circuit "off" but without any background noise. The results suggested that only a few subjects benefitted from the noise-suppression circuits, and in several cases performance in noise was poorer with the noise suppression circuit than without it. An information-transfer analysis of the errors indicated that enhanced or decreased performance was generally a result of changes across all phonetic features, not specific ones.
authors.affiliation: Department of Otolaryngology--Head and Neck Surgery, University of Iowa, Iowa City 52242.
authors.forename: R S
authors.initials: RS
authors.lastname: Tyler
authors.forename: F K
authors.initials: FK
authors.lastname: Kuk
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D004867:Equipment Design; D006310:Hearing Aids; D006319:Hearing Loss, Sensorineural / Q000628:therapy*; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D009622:Noise; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*