ON THE EVALUATION OF A NEW-GENERATION OF HEARING-AIDS

Hearing aids with new technological features offer the promise of nove l speech-processing and loudness-control capabilities. Full exploitati on and assessment of these capabilities will call for the acceptance o f fitting and evaluation strategies different from those currently use d for traditional linear hearing aids. Until an appropriate set of pro cedures comes into relatively widespread use, it will be difficult to draw definitive conclusions about the desirability and effectiveness o f the new options in amplification systems. This paper reviews some of the issues that should be considered as new evaluation procedures are explored.