Assessment of Novel Sound Changing Principles in Hearing Instruments to Determine Their Application - 2020_09

Not Applicable

Completed

Brief Summary: Participants will perform two different listening tasks: (1) listening to, and repeating back, sentence lists presented in noise, and (2) Subjective rating of effort \& performance following each condition. During this study, continuous, non-invasive physiological measurements (skin conductance, changes in pupil dilation) will be recorded from participants. Using this paradigm we will be assessing the effect of different hearing aid processing algorithms on listening effort. The study takes the form of a one factor (algorithm), within-subjects design.

Each participant performs the Speech perception task with each algorithm (reference, noise reduction I, noise reduction II, noise reduction III), at two individualized signal-to-noise ratios (SRT90 and SRT50). Additionally subjective performance ratings in real-life will be collected.

Recruitment & Eligibility

Inclusion Criteria

Exclusion Criteria

Contraindications to the MD in this study, e.g. known hypersensitivity or allergy to the investigational product
Limited mobility and not in the position to attend weekly appointments
Inability to produce a reliable hearing test result
Massively limited dexterity
Known psychological problems
Known central hearing disorders

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Differences in Event-related-skin-conductance	6 weeks	Skin conductance will be recorded from participants during the performance of the auditory task. Analyses will be carried out on the skin conductance response recorded during a time window following each auditory stimulus. It is planned to analyze event-related skin conductance response amplitudes \& latencies (micro-Siemens \& milliseconds).
Differences in Event-related-pupil-dilation (ERPDs)	6 weeks	Pupil dilations will be recorded from the participant during the performance of the auditory tasks. Analyses will be carried out relative to the pre-trial baseline (measured one second prior to the onset of the stimulus), in order to account for differences in baseline physiological activity. It is planned to analyze event-related-pupil-dilations. We use the unit: pixels. The size of a pixel in 1mm\^2 is relative to the distance between the eye and the camera. Even though participants heads were placed on a chin rest that was always the same distance from the camera, the distance between the individual eye and the camera can still be different due to differences in participants' anatomies. Thus, pupil dilation are often reported relative to an individuals' baseline, for example as percent change relative to the baseline. Therefore, we use the unit: pixels, as the use of mm\^2 may be inaccurate.

Secondary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Oldenburg Sentence Test	6 weeks	Words recalled correctly: words repeated back by participants are logged and the percentage of words recalled correctly calculated.
Sound Quality Ratings	6 weeks	The sound quality ratings will be assessed with the aid of a Multi-Stimulus Test. The data, serving as secondary outcome measure, are collected in the laboratory. The scale ranges from 0 "very bad" to 6 "very good" in increments of 1. Individual sound quality rating from participants are averaged over 3 different acoustic scenes for each hearing aid program.
Spectro-temporal-modulation Detection Thresholds (STM)	6 weeks	Stimuli which contain simultaneous frequency and amplitude modulations of a wide-band noise carrier are presented to the participants. The depth of the modulations is systematically varied and the individual modulation detection thresholds are recorded as a broadband decibel (dB) value. For each participant 4 measures were made and averaged to give a mean STM threshold.