Interactive fitting of hearing aids

Authors

  • Rolph Houben Clinical and Experimental Audiology, Academic Medical Center, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
  • Wouter Dreschler Clinical and Experimental Audiology, Academic Medical Center, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Abstract

This paper describes a pilot experiment with an experimental procedure for individualized ne-tuning of hearing-aid fittings. The preference of a hearing- aid user is determined by a comparison between different sound samples. This preference is fed to a mathematical optimization system (a modified simplex procedure) that ef ciently chooses the next comparison. The system should eventually converge to the optimal hearing-aid setting. In order to improve the input of the optimization algorithm, a two-step paradigm was developed. The listeners were presented with three sound samples. First, they had to determine which sample differed from the other two (three-alternative forced choice with an ‘odd-ball paradigm’). This step was included to increase the reliability of the second step in which the listeners had to judge which of the different samples sounded better (two-alternative unforced choice). The new paradigm was tested with speech in noise (SNR=+5 dB) for three parameters of a simulated four-channel compression hearing aid. The results indicate that the new paradigm was much less time-consuming that those previously described in literature. However, for both normal hearing and hearing-impaired subjects, the minimally perceived differences between hearing-aid settings were large compared to the values relevant for clinical practice. This indicates that either the subjects did not hear the differences between the samples or that the task was too dif cult. Based on user comments, it is likely that the unfavourable results were largely caused by the odd-ball paradigm. A slight adaptation of the procedure might lead to better results in the future.

References

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Additional Files

Published

2007-12-15

How to Cite

Houben, R., & Dreschler, W. (2007). Interactive fitting of hearing aids. Proceedings of the International Symposium on Auditory and Audiological Research, 1, 523–532. Retrieved from https://proceedings.isaar.eu/index.php/isaarproc/article/view/2007-52

Issue

Vol. 1 (2007): Auditory Signal Processing in Hearing Impaired Listeners

Section

2007/6. Hearing-aid evaluation and optimization

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