Motion-Steered Noise Management in Hearing Aids Reduces Listening Effort and Stress Indexed by Pupil Size and Heart Rate.

Only 24 of the 32 participants had usable pupil recordings and only 20 had usable heart-rate recordings. The 12 dropped from the heart-rate analysis were removed because too little of the wristband signal was usable, which the authors link to hand movements carried over from the earlier task. The study was paid for by Oticon A/S, the company that makes both hearing aids tested, although the authors state the funder had no role in the design, conduct, analysis or write-up. This was one laboratory session. Nothing here shows whether the differences in pupil dilation and heart rate between the aids last beyond the session or matter to people in daily life. Self-rated effort was collected once after each block of 24 trials, so it could not capture effort changing from trial to trial, and it showed no difference between the aids even though the physiological measures did. The explanation offered for the difference between the aids, that hearing aid B adapts its processing using movement information, comes from how the two devices are built rather than from a test that switched that feature on and off in the same aid. The listening task was hard for everyone and the news clips lasted 33 seconds, which is much shorter than a real conversation.

Funded by Oticon A/S, which makes both hearing aids tested. The authors state the funder had no role in the design or conduct of the study, in collecting, analysing or interpreting the data, in preparing or approving the article, or in the decision to submit it. The authors declare no other conflicts of interest.

Do not read this as evidence that motion-steered noise management improves hearing. The two aids produced the same speech comprehension scores, and the difference between them was in pupil dilation and heart rate during a single laboratory session, funded by the company that makes both devices.