PREFERRED HEARING-AID FREQUENCY RESPONSES IN SIMULATED LISTENING ENVIRONMENTS

This study was designed to determine if an adaptive strategy could be used to select frequency/gain characteristics that would be considered appropriate across a variety of listening environments. In Experiment I, the test-retest reliability of the paired comparison procedure use d in Experiment II was assessed in quiet for nine subjects and in spee ch noise for six subjects. For both conditions, results revealed mean standard deviations of <3 dB from 200 through 4000 Hz. In Experiment I I, four subjects selected frequency/gain characteristics for five diff erent listening environments (quiet, speech noise, quiet conference ro om, reverberant lecture hall, and reverberant lecture hall in noise). In general, subjects did not tend to select different frequency/gain c haracteristics across the five simulated environments used in this stu dy. When differences in frequency responses were observed, they tended to be alterations in overall gain rather than changes in relative fre quency response. Findings support additional evaluation in more divers e listening environments, possibly with systems that incorporate nonli near signal processing.