The effect of stimulus duration on preferences for gain adjustments when listening to speech.
William M Whitmer, Benjamin Caswell-Midwinter, Graham Naylor
PMID 34762024WHAT IT FOUND
Longer speech samples made hearing-aid gain preferences more frequent and reliable.
Even 6-second samples left thresholds large, so small adjustments may not be heard.
Key findings
01Better and worse judgments increased as stimulus duration grew from 2 to 4 seconds and from 4 to 6 seconds.
02Preference thresholds decreased with duration for gain increments in low, mid, and high bands and for decrements in low and mid bands, but not for high-band decrements.
03Reliability rose from a median of 67% for short sentences and 2-second segments to 75% for 4-second and 6-second segments.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
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What it does not show
The study tested judgments in a quiet lab through headphones, not real hearing-aid fitting in everyday listening. Participants had a median better-ear four-frequency threshold average of 35 dB HL (range 12-56 dB HL), so the results may not apply to people with very different hearing profiles. The maximum duration tested was 6 seconds, and the paper states that it is unknown whether longer samples would help further. The tested gain steps were -12, -6, +6, and +12 dB, which may not match small clinical adjustments. The two segments were different parts of a story, so natural speech differences could have affected judgments. The study did not test hearing aids with fast-acting compression. The duration effect was modest: agreement and reliability did not improve significantly from 4 to 6 seconds. Twenty-six of the 29 participants had previously done a related experiment, which may have given them practice.
Declared interests
The authors reported no potential conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that 6-second speech samples make small hearing-aid adjustments easy to detect. The paper says adjustments still needed to be 3-6 dB for increases and 5-12 dB for decreases, and smaller patient preferences may not reflect the actual sound change.