Effect of (Mis)Matched Compression Speed on Speech Recognition in Bimodal Listeners.
Dimitar Spirrov, Eugen Kludt, Eline Verschueren and 2 others
PMID 32865486WHAT IT FOUND
Matching compression settings between a cochlear implant and hearing aid did not improve speech recognition in quiet or noise.
Both experimental configurations outperformed the participants' own devices, suggesting that re-fitting with standard clinical rules may offer more benefit than complex matching algorithms.
Key findings
01There was no significant difference in speech recognition in quiet or noise between the standard and matched slow compression configurations.
02Participants performed significantly better with both experimental configurations (standard and matched) than with their own clinical devices.
03When noise came from the implant side, the standard configuration provided significantly more bimodal benefit than the matched slow configuration.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The sample size was small (18 participants). Participants knew when they were using their own devices, which may have biased their preferences or performance (no blinding for the own-device condition). The study excluded people with profound hearing loss in the non-implanted ear, so results may not apply to those with little residual acoustic hearing.
Declared interests
Funded by Agentschap Innoveren en Ondernemen and Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek. No commercial conflicts declared.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that the participants' own devices were inferior because of poor fitting alone. The study found that both experimental configurations outperformed the own devices, but this may be partly due to the own devices not being loudness balanced or having active noise reduction algorithms that interfered. The key finding is that matching compression speeds did not help; standard fitting was just as good, if not better in specific noise conditions.