title: User preference and reliability of bilateral hearing aid gain adjustments.
abstract: The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the consistency and reliability of user adjustments to hearing aid gain and the resulting effects on speech understanding. Sixteen bilaterally aided individuals with hearing loss adjusted their hearing aid gain to optimize listening comfort and speech clarity while listening to speech in quiet and noisy backgrounds. Following these adjustments, participants readjusted their aids to optimize clarity and comfort while listening to speech in quiet. These final gain settings were recorded and compared to those provided by NAL-NL1 prescriptive targets. In addition, speech understanding was tested with the hearing aids set at target and user gain settings. Performance differences between the gain settings were then assessed. Study results revealed that although some listeners preferred more or less gain than prescribed, on average, user and prescribed gain settings were similar in both ears. Some individuals, however, made gain adjustments between ears resulting in "gain mismatches." These "mismatches" were often inconsistent across trials suggesting that these adjustments were unreliable. Speech testing results, however, showed no significant difference across the different gain settings suggesting that the gain deviations introduced in this study were not large enough to significantly affect speech understanding.
authors.affiliation: Department of Hearing and Speech Science, Dan Maddox Hearing Aid Research Laboratory, Vanderbilt Bill Wilkerson Center, Room 8310 Medical Center East, South Tower, 1215 21st Ave, South, Nashville, TN 37232-8242, USA. ben.hornsby@vanderbilt.edu
authors.forename: Benjamin W Y
authors.initials: BW
authors.lastname: Hornsby
authors.forename: H Gustav
authors.initials: HG
authors.lastname: Mueller
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D001301:Audiometry, Pure-Tone; D001309:Auditory Threshold / Q000502:physiology; D002755:Choice Behavior; D005260:Female; D006310:Hearing Aids; D006312:Hearing Loss, Bilateral / Q000628:therapy*; D006319:Hearing Loss, Sensorineural / Q000628:therapy*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D017755:Prosthesis Fitting; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013067:Speech Perception