Stephanie A. Davidson

Preliminary Studies on the Use of an ABR Amplitude Projection Procedure for Hearing Aid Selection

Hearing aid selection in young nonverbal children is difficult and objective selection procedures are needed. Kiessling (Scand Audiol 1982;11:269-275; Arch Otorhinolaryngol 1983;238:233-240) has proposed an objective hearing aid selection method based on an unaided ABR amplitude projection procedure. However, Kiesslings ABR projection method is based on the assumption that ABR amplitude is directly related to the loudness of a signal--an assumption which has not been tested. This assumption was investigated in a group of ten normally hearing and three hearing-impaired listeners. The results indicated that ABR amplitude measures obtained in a single trial do not always correlate well with perceived loudness, but ABR amplitudes averaged over several trials do correlate well with estimates of perceived loudness. The hearing-impaired listeners then participated in a second phase of the investigation in which hearing aids chosen by the ABR projection procedure were compared with hearing aids chosen by more conventional methods. The results indicated that the projection procedure prescribed appropriate gain and compression characteristics for two of the three hearing-impaired listeners.

The Use of Large Group Assistive Listening Devices With and Without Hearing Aids in an Adult Classroom Setting

During a hearing loss management workshop, 10 listeners with normal hearing sensitivity and 18 listeners with sensorineural hearing loss compared four group assistive listening devices (ALDs)—FM, i...

Programmable Telecoil Responses: Potential Advantages for Assistive Listening Device Fittings.

Ten experienced hearing aid users were tested to evaluate an assistive listening device inductively coupled to three different hearing aids-their own BTE hearing aid and associated telecoil, a programmable hearing aid with the telecoil programmed using the manufacturers algorithm, and the same programmable hearing aid with the telecoil programmed so that the real-ear gain obtained with the hearing aid-assistive listening device combination matched a prescriptive target. Results indicated that modifying the telecoil response to match a prescriptive target can result in enhanced speech understanding and higher preference rankings.

Assistive listening devices and hearing aids: coupling considerations.

Assistive listening devices (ALDs) can be used to supplement hearing aid performance in difficult listening conditions, but caution must be used when coupling ALDs to personal hearing aids because the frequency-gain characteristics of the hearing aid may be altered. Data illustrating subject performance using ALDs coupled to personal hearing aids, ALDs with headsets, and ALDs coupled to hearing aids with programmable telecoils are presented to illustrate the problems associated with coupling ALDs and hearing aids and to provide possible solutions to these problems.

Presentation level determination for CV tokens using a computer-controlled adaptive procedure

The feasibility of using a computer-controlled adaptive procedure to find maximum monotic performance for consonant-vowel (CV) stimuli was evaluated and compared to the procedure typically used to determine a performance-intensity function in two experiments. In experiment I, the computer-controlled adaptive procedure and the typical manual procedure were evaluated on 26 normally hearing listeners. Results indicated that the shape of the performance-intensity functions was similar for both procedures with the computer-controlled adaptive procedure selecting a higher presentation level. The test-retest reliability for the computer-controlled adaptive procedure was good with a mean difference on retest of 1.2 dB. In experiment II, the same procedures were evaluated using 9 sensorineural hearing impaired subjects. Again similar configuration between functions was observed. The primary advantage of the computer-controlled adaptive procedure for both subject groups is efficiency in terms of time of administration and number of CV stimuli used.