Journal article
Towards Auditory Profile-Based Hearing-Aid Fitting: Fitting Rationale and Pilot Evaluation
Background-The clinical characterization of hearing deficits for hearing-aid fitting purposes is typically based on the pure-tone audiogram only. In a previous study, a group of hearing-impaired listeners completed a comprehensive test battery that was designed to tap into different dimensions of hearing abilities.
A data-driven analysis of the data yielded four clinically relevant patient sub-populations or "auditory profiles". The purpose of the current study was to propose and pilot-test profile-based hearing-aid settings in order to explore their potential for providing more targeted hearing-aid treatment.
Methods-Four candidate hearing-aid settings were developed and evaluated by a subset of the participants tested previously. The evaluation consisted of multi-comparison preference ratings that were carried out in realistic sound scenarios. Results-Listeners belonging to the different auditory profiles showed different patterns of preference for the tested hearing-aid settings that were largely consistent with the expectations.
Conclusions-The results of this pilot evaluation support further investigations into stratified, profile-based hearing-aid fitting with wearable hearing aids.
Language: | English |
---|---|
Publisher: | MDPI |
Year: | 2021 |
Pages: | 10-21 |
ISSN: | 20394349 and 20394330 |
Types: | Journal article |
DOI: | 10.3390/audiolres11010002 |
ORCIDs: | Sanchez Lopez, Raul , 0000-0002-7960-1188 , Santurette, Sébastien , Dau, Torsten and 0000-0002-1107-9274 |