Effect of Speech Enhancer on Listening Effort With EEG

Sonova

Status: Invitation-only

Conditions: Listening Effort

Treatments: Other: Speech Enhancer

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Industry; Other

Identifiers

NCT06049199

15063

Details and patient eligibility

About

In previous studies, Speech Enhancer has been shown to improve Listening Effort using a subjective method. To overcome the weakness of subjective testing, this study uses an objective measurement that has shown convincing results in previous studies addressing Listening Effort.

Full description

The Speech Enhancer (SE) provides better speech intelligibility for soft speech while maintaining the same sound quality for loud input level.

Better speech intelligibility may also result in less listening effort in some circumstances. So there was the hope that the SE provides better speech intelligibility and less listening effort for situation with soft speech.

The SE has already been intensely and successfully investigated in early studies.

The cognitive performance on a neurophiosiological level has already been successfully investigated in a previous studies.

Enrollment: 27 estimated patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Experienced (minimum use duration 6 months)
• Adult (minimum age: 18 years) hearing aid users,
• Symmetrical hearing loss (difference between ears <= 10 dB for 1kHz-6kHz),
• Sensorineural hearing loss,
• Air Conduction - bone conduction gap <= 10 dB,
• Written and spoken German,
• Ability to understand instruction,
• Ability to describe listening experiences,
• Ability to attend to the appointments,
• Healthy outer ear (without previous surgical proce-dures),
• Hearing loss within the fitting ranges of the investiga-tional product,
• Informed consent as documented by signature.

Exclusion criteria

• Clinical contraindications deformity of the ear (closed ear canal or absence of pinna),
• Known hypersensitivity or allergy,
• Not willing to wear the hearing aid,
• Fluctuating hearing that could influence the results,
• Limited mobility and not in the position to attend all appointments,
• Inability to produce a reliable hearing test result,
• Massively limited dexterity,
• Known psychological problems,
• Known central hearing disorders.

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: N/A

Interventional model: Single Group Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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27 participants in 1 patient group

Hearing impaired group

Experimental group

Description:

The hearing impaired group will compare the reference condition (SpeechEnhancer on) with the intervention condition (SpeechEnhancer off).

Treatment:

Other: Speech Enhancer