Understanding Individual Listening Strategies

Northwestern University

Status: Invitation-only

Conditions: Hearing Loss, Sensorineural

Treatments: Device: Hearing Aid with settings based on audiogram alone; Device: Hearing aid with settings customized to match their individual listening strategy

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT06962540

STU00221736

Details and patient eligibility

About

The goal of this clinical trial is to learn if hearing aid settings that are customized to individual listening strategies result in better speech understanding than non-customized hearing aid settings. The main question it aims to answer is:

Do customized hearing aid settings result in better speech understanding?

Researchers will compare hearing aid settings that match individual listening strategy to a general setting.

Participants will:

Wear hearing aids for a 2-hour visit to our laboratory. Listen to some sentences in noise and repeat the sentences they hear, with two different hearing aid settings Listen to some sentences in noise and rate how understandable they think those sentences are, with two different hearing aid settings

Full description

Participants will complete standard clinical hearing evaluations and a listening profile test to evaluate their individual listening strategy. Hearing aids will then be programmed either based on their clinical hearing evaluations alone using typical hearing aid settings or based on their hearing test with settings further adjusted to account for their individual listening strategies.

Enrollment: 30 estimated patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18 to 90 years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Sensorineural hearing loss

Exclusion criteria

• Montreal Cognitive Assessment < 23 points

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Crossover Assignment

Masking: Single Blind

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30 participants in 2 patient groups

Customized to match listening strategy First

Active Comparator group

Description:

Participants in this arm will listen to hearing aid settings programmed to match their listening strategy first, then the general setting

Treatment:

Device: Hearing aid with settings customized to match their individual listening strategy

Device: Hearing Aid with settings based on audiogram alone

Not customized to match listening strategy First

Active Comparator group

Description:

Participants will listen to hearing aid settings based only on their pure-tone thresholds first (general hearing aid settings), then ones programmed to match their listening strategies.

Treatment:

Device: Hearing aid with settings customized to match their individual listening strategy

Device: Hearing Aid with settings based on audiogram alone