A Pilot Investigation Regarding Speech-Recognition Performance in Noise for Adults with Hearing Loss in the FM+HA Listening Condition

Abstract

While the concurrent use of the hearing aid (HA) microphone with frequency modulation (FM) technology can decrease speech-recognition performance, the FM+HA condition is still an important setting for users of both HA and FM technology. The primary goal of this investigation was to evaluate the effect of attenuating HA gain in the FM+HA listening condition on the signal-to-noise ratio for 50% sentence recognition in two situations: (1) when speech was presented to the FM transmitter microphone and (2) when speech was presented to the HA microphone. A second goal was to determine whether measures based on the Articulation Index (Al) could be used to predict.