(Why) Do Transparent Hearing Devices Impair Speech Perception in Collocated Noise?
Florian Denk, Luca Wiederschein, Markus Kemper and 1 others
PMID 38629486WHAT IT FOUND
Transparent hearing devices made normal-hearing listeners need a slightly worse signal-to-noise ratio to understand speech in same-direction noise.
The effect was small, about 0.5 to 1 dB for most devices. Listening effort did not show a clear change. One earphone showed no impairment.
Key findings
01Transparent hearing devices produced a small but measurable speech-intelligibility disadvantage in Experiment I, around 0.5 dB for most devices and 1 dB for the generic research device and one commercial aid.
02Rated listening effort did not show a significant disadvantage for individual devices in Experiment I, but the average across devices was 0.5 to 0.8 dB.
03The same research hearing device showed a larger intelligibility disadvantage with generic equalization than with individual equalization.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The participants were young normal-hearing adults, not hearing-impaired patients, so the results do not directly show how an amplified hearing aid affects communication for people with hearing loss. The devices were tested in a controlled collocated noise setup with speech and noise from the same loudspeaker, not in everyday listening situations. The devices were worn for about 20 to 30 minutes per condition, so longer-term acclimatization was not tested. The fitting used a closed coupling with custom foam earplugs and modified tubing, which may not match common open hearing-aid fittings. No device achieved perfect transparency in the sound-quality model, and some devices could not be equalized to the target across all frequencies. Effects on listening effort were not significant device by device, and averaged effects were small.
Declared interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest and received no financial support for the research, authorship, or publication.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that transparent hearing devices are clinically harmful for patients with hearing loss. The study tested normal-hearing listeners with devices adjusted to approach open-ear listening, not the amplified use case for hearing-impaired patients.